History Highlights
Certech Founder Stuart Uram: “I was just so taken by the technology.”
Armed with a doctorate from MIT in
1960, Stuart (Stu) Uram began his career with metallurgy in mind, but he made his mark on the investment casting industry manufacturing ceramic cores. After a decade of gaining experience
with leading investment casting compa- nies, Uram struck out on his own and founded Certech, one of the industry’s leading ceramic core manufacturers. Uram says he discovered metallurgy
and fell in love with the foundry indus- try at MIT. “I graduated with my doctor- ate in 1959-60. MIT foundry group had a relationship with Hitchiner, so I got a job interview at Hitchiner in Milford, ” He said. “I had never seen an investment casting in my life, and I was really fasci- nated with the technology and what was going on. It was a real eye-opener.” At this time, Hitchiner was mov- ing from the solid mold block process to the ceramic shell process. After working about four years at Hitchiner, Uram was introduced to a new technology in the in- vestment casting industry at TRW, which later became Precision Cast Parts. “I had never been in another invest- ment casting foundry, and I was really blown away by the technology.
They
were making the first DS (direction- ally solidified) castings in those days,” he continued. “I would have stayed at Hitchiner forever, but I was just so taken by the technology.” Several years later,
a downturn in
the industry– combined with changes in personnel, and a certain restlessness on his part– prompted Uram to quit his job and strike out on his own.
“I remember walking down the hall-
way thinking ‘what am I doing. I’ve got three kids and a mortgage and no job,’
82
but it was the happiest week of my life. It never occurred to me that there was a risk. I always felt like, well if this doesn’t work out I’ll get a job someplace; some- thing will happen.”
“I once heard a statement that en- trepreneurs would rather work for them-
Stu Uram
of weeks from disappearing at that point,” he said.
Uram remained confident however, and he soon received a large order from Arwood for cores used in a casting for 747 aircraft engine. “If I didn’t get that order, it would have been the end of the company because I didn’t have any mon- ey or any places to look,” he added. But business grew, orders started pouring in, and Uram soon outgrew his garage space.
soon became my biggest
“Howmet and Precision Cast Parts customers,”
he continued. “We did a lot of work for hardware foundries all over the place, from small ones to bigger ones.” Eventually, Certech
built
selves for a dollar an hour than for some body else for a $100. I think that’s true,” he said.
The initial funding for his new en- terprise was two maxed out credit cards. With those funds, he a rented room and bought his supplies: “some pots and pans and a little hobby kiln, and a beat-up in- jection machine.”
Uram put an announcement in Met-
allurgy News for his new ceramics core company, trying to interest potential in- vestors and customers. TRW metals gave him an order for 50,000 cores, and with that purchase order, he was able to obtain a loan and move to a garage. ”Literally, within a few weeks, I bought two kilns and some bits of equipment; I had a friendly tool maker that gave me a real deal on the tooling, and I started making cores.” The TRW job, however, did not pan
out, and the fledgling business came close to closing. “We were probably a couple
three
plants. “We started a plant in Pennsyl- vania in the area I grew up because we got so busy in New Jersey, and there was a labor shortage.
I rented a store front
and hired a dozen women to do finish- ing work; we were trucking stuff back and forth between the two places, and they were doing a really great job. I said, ‘well we meet capacity, so why don’t we build a factor out here’
...so we built a fac- tory and it just grew and was a success.” Meanwhile, a growing interest ceramic cores in Europe
in Certech’s
prompted the decision to build a plant in the UK. “It was a little bit of a struggle for the
first year, but there again, we got some good people who got the place up and running, and every year was better than the year before,” he said. “We rarely had a year when sales went down... and the industry developed from the very simple kinds of cored parts, airfoil shaped or simple valve bodies and that kind of stuff.
The aircraft engine February 2012
12
October 2010
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