Not too many companies are able to survive and thrive for 80 years, especially when their primary market is the aerospace industry. Yet, that is what Costa Mesa, CA’s Surveyor Service Company has done with great success.

Founded in 1926 by current president Stan Mahler’s great grandfather, the company has grown by offering high-precision surveying and measuring equipment to a broad range of markets.
In the beginning the firm sold its products and services mainly to individuals and companies using surveying equipment for traditional surveying.

In 1949, however, the company signed an agreement with Switzerland-based Wild Heerbrugg Instrument Company to offer more highly precise surveying equipment. During Southern California’s aerospace boom (50s - 80s), the company started providing precision portable optical measurement equipment and services to the aerospace industry for alignment and QA of large tooling and airframe components.

In 1990, the company added the Servco Industrial Division to better concentrate on providing portable QC products and services to its industrial customers.

Recently CNC West visited Servco Industrial for an interview with company president Stan Mahler about his company’s products and services. The results of that interview are presented here for your review.

                                                        C.H. Bush, editor

CNC West: Stan, thanks for having us in for a visit.

Mahler: My pleasure, Chuck.

CNC West:  You know, I’ve probably done more than 400 interviews for CNC West, but I believe yours is the oldest company I’ve visited. Even so, you seem to be thriving, growing actually. How have you managed to do that?

Mahler: Mainly by specializing in the measurement field and by making sure we stay on top of the latest technology. As you know we started out selling and servicing surveying equipment, the kind you see on tripods with guys in the field measuring the earth. Right now we sell and service very high-tech portable measuring equipment to customers building ships, aircraft, rockets, buildings, dish antennas, basically anything large that needs to be precisely measured. We also subcontract out to do the QA work ourselves.

CNC West: You do all the work from this office in Costa Mesa?

Mahler: No, we’ve been in this 14,000 square-foot facility for 40 years, but we also have offices in Santa Ana, San Diego, Phoenix, Tuscon, and Albuquerque. We currently have 52 employees.

CNC West: Are those other offices, mainly for sales?

Mahler: Sales and service. We provide product sales, maintenance and repair and subcontract services from all our offices. One thing we’re very proud of is that we’re an ISO 9001 certified company. We just renewed our certification again for another three years.

CNC West: You know, I think I came here with the wrong impression about your company. I thought you were a lot smaller than you are. Maybe it’s time to ask about the products and services you offer. Our readers are manufacturers, tier 1 and below subcontractors, and small-to-large machining job shops. What do you folks offer that they might be interested in?

Mahler: Well, a lot of things, I think. We divide our offerings into two main categories. Products that we sell and services we offer using those products.

CNC West: Why don’t you tell me about the products first, then we’ll be able to better understand your services?

Products

Mahler: Sure. Actually we offer three main products. We sell and support the Romer Infinite Portable CMM, which is a very powerful and accurate articulating arm with a touch probe. We also sell the lower-cost Romer Stinger II portable CMM. The arms are available in six lengths each, up to 12 feet for the Infinite and 15 feet for the Stinger. A second product line for us is the Perceptron 3D laser scanning attachment for the Romer Arm. The Perceptron is pretty amazing, really. It enables reverse engineering, point cloud-to-CAD comparison, 3D visualization and inspection applications. We sell these scanners into such markets as automotive, animation, artifacts, aerospace, apparel, medical, manufacturing and a lot more.

CNC West: You said three product lines.

Mahler: Yes, we also sell and service API Laser Trackers for precise, mobile and fast coordinate measuring. The API TrackerIII laser measuring system allows you to measure and inspect on site all sizes of parts and components, as well as part-to-part assembly of large objects.

CNC West: How large?

Mahler: Up to a measuring diameter of about 200 feet.

CNC West: Who would use one of those?

Mahler: Well, just about anyone who needs to do very precise quality measurement on projects 10 feet or longer. That includes people designing cars, aircraft manufacturers, space satellites, power generators, anything large.

CNC West: I see. What about the Romer arm? Who would use one of those?

Mahler: Mostly people measuring or scanning parts under 10 feet, say down to about a foot. Parts smaller than that, you’re probably better off with a standard CMM.

Software

CNC West: What about software for the systems?

Mahler: Right. We sell and use software called SpatialAnalyzer, which is a traceable metrology 3D graphical software platform that can simultaneously communicate to virtually any number and types of dimensional measurement systems while performing complex analysis tasks. It’s easy to use for building, inspection and reverse engineering of parts and tools. It’s our choice for use with the Romer portable CMM and for the API laser tracker. We also sell a variety of other software packages, including Polyworks, Rhino 3D, Cyclone and CloudWorx. The bottom line for our customers to know is that we stay in our measurement niche. As I said, we’re specialists.

Servco Industrial Services

CNC West: I think I understand your products. Maybe we’d we’d better talk about the kinds of services you provide.

Mahler: I’ve asked Glenn Anguline, our measurement services manager, to join us for this part.

CNC West: Fine. Hi, Glenn, tell me what kinds of services our readers might get from Servco.

Anguline: Hello, Chuck. Basically we offer services in three areas. For one, we’re a QA and reverse-engineering job shop. On the QA side, you could say we have CMM, will travel, like the old Paladin TV show. When the customers project is too big to ship to us, we go to him. When the parts are small enough they can ship them to us, which is cheaper. The same goes for reverse engineering. We also repair or service products we sell, including certified calibration. Plus, we offer on-the-job training. People who buy an API laser tracker or a Romer arm often bring us in to train key people in how to use them.

Mahler: Chuck, we also offer consulting services. For instance, suppose a company has a large tool or component they need to assemble or check, and their people can’t quite figure out how to do it. In a case like that, we send in our technicians, not to do it for them, but to assist them.

CNC West: But you’re still dealing with projects that fall into the size ranges you described earlier?

Anguline: Yes, that’s dictated by the equipment. We’ve done some pretty exotic projects over the years, but mostly we do aircraft structures, wings, fixtures, ships, boats, stuff like that.

CNC West: Exotic stuff?

Mahler: We had a man on site for 2 years helping with placement of the stainless steel exterior skins at the Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, for example. We also did a project for the National Ignition Facility in Livermore, California. We helped position some 100,000-pound fixtures on concrete pedastals 20 feet in the air. They had to be within plus or minus a half a milimeter.

Anguline: Probably 80% of our business is working with aerospace customers. Mainly because of the size of their projects. If your readers need our help, they should keep in mind that from one to ten feet we’ll use the Romer portable CMM. From ten feet up, we use the API laser tracker. We’re able to check all critical dimensions and provide complete paper trails to meet any aerospace requirement. We’ve been at this a long time. Basically, we’re economical up to about 100 parts. If there are more to do than that, it may be better for the customer to buy equipment.

CNC West: Got it. What about lead time? How fast can you respond?

Anguline: A few days is normal, but in an emergency we can juggle things and get there in a couple of hours.

CNC West: Sounds like you’ve got it together. I’m sure our readers will be interested in your products and services. Thanks for a good interview.

Mahler: Thanks for coming. We enjoyed it.

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