Kays Engineering Celebrates 40th Anniversary
Kays Engineering began as a small welding and repair shop and quickly grew to become a designer and builder of custom machinery for the automotive industry, eventually acquiring three gundrilling machine manufacturers.
Share
Kays Engineering Inc., the original equipment manufacturer of the DeHoff, Eldorado and TechniDrill brands of gundrilling machines, will celebrate its 40th anniversary in December 2020.
Kays Engineering opened its doors for business on December 1, 1980, in Marshall, Missouri. Founded by Ed Kays, the company began as a small welding and repair shop, with Kays as the sole full-time employee along with three part-time employees. The company quickly became a designer and builder of custom machinery for the automotive industry. The increase in business helped the company expand to more than 30 employees across four buildings.
Kays Engineering entered a new market in 1994 with the acquisition of DeHoff, a manufacturer of gundrilling machines in Cranston, Rhode Island. The DeHoff manufacturing operation was moved to the Marshall facility in 1996. To accommodate the new product line, the company relocated to a 50,000 square foot building that same year.
Kays Engineering purchased another gundrilling machine manufacturer, Eldorado, in 2002. This company also relocated to Marshall from its original location in Milford, Connecticut. The acquisition further diversified the company’s product lineup.
In June of this year, Kays Engineering acquired TechniDrill, a gundrill machine manufacturer in Kent, Ohio. The company has grown to more 60 employees and serves customers in the automotive, aerospace, firearms, medical, petroleum, agriculture and plastic molding industries. It now has customers in 30 countries across five continents.
Related Content
-
How I Made It: Aneesa Muthana
Aneesa Muthana grew up helping out at her parents’ Chicago grinding shop before striking out on her own in the ‘90s. When business slowed down dramatically, she embraced change and built her machine shop into a modern facility using Swiss-type CNC machines.__PRESENT
-
Inside the Premium Machine Shop Making Fasteners
AMPG can’t help but take risks — its management doesn’t know how to run machines. But these risks have enabled it to become a runaway success in its market.
-
A History of Precision: The Invention and Evolution of Swiss-Style Machining
In the late 1800s, a new technology — Swiss-type machines — emerged to serve Switzerland’s growing watchmaking industry. Today, Swiss-machined parts are ubiquitous, and there’s a good reason for that: No other machining technology can produce tiny, complex components more efficiently or at higher quality.