Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, November 20, 1993 TAG: 9311200048
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DOUG LESMERISES STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The company has a contract with Ingersoll-Rand Co.'s rock drill division in Roanoke and is coming to the Roanoke Valley to cut transportation costs involved in shipping its parts from Statesville.
Ingersoll-Rand has been giving most of its peening business to National Peening since 1991 and in June agreed to use the company for all of that work.
J.B. Goria of JGB Commercial Real Estate, who negotiated the 10-year lease this week, said Friday the company will occupy the 20,000-square-foot plant at 2167 Industrial Drive. The building now houses a paper goods distributor that will relocate. The facility will be upgraded to meet National Peening's needs, he said.
The company should open for business in the first half of January, said Goria. The Salem plant will be known as Roanoke National Peening.
Managers for the operation will transfer from Statesville, but five or six jobs will be created for local workers. They will operate computers that run the peening process and oversee the machinery.
The jobs do not require computer knowledge and, if like those at the Statesville plant, will pay about $6 an hour, the company said.
The peening process "shoots pellets of metal against manufactured parts and smoothes and rounds it off and takes out imperfections," said Goria.
The process, compared to sandblasting, uses air pressure to push metal balls through hoses. The balls, called shot, put microscopic dents in the machined parts.
Rick Peterson, purchasing manager for Ingersoll-Rand, said National peens its drill bits and drill rods. The process builds up "compressive stress" in the parts and strengthens the parts and helps keep them from cracking, he said.
"The main theory it to give [the part] longer life," he said.
Goria said that some companies in the Roanoke Valley send their parts away to be peened. National Peening's Salem plant plans to solicit that business and expand, possibly creating more jobs.
The Statesville plant and another National Peening plant in Wilmington, N.C., peen parts for the automotive and aerospace industries.
by CNB