SL Engineering Company, and owner Steve Lee, bring together well over 30 years of experience in precision metal and plastic manufacturing. After owning his shop in Costa Mesa with “a lot of Browne & Sharpe machines”, he transitioned his business twenty years ago to Huntington Beach with a variety of CNC lathes and mills, (and a few manual machines he uses on the occasional requests for special prototype projects from his customers).
The latest addition to SL’s machine line up is a Tsugami B0325U-III, which combined with its Patriot 338 bar feeder, is a total of 30 feet of high producing machinery. The speed and accuracy of parts production allows SL to quote and deliver high quality parts on time. “With the amount of parts we do for just one customer, this new machine does it all complete, instead of two different machines with hand loading”, says Steve. “One part for our customer is out of 321 Stainless – it’s difficult to machine, it has a lot of nickel in it, and it’s rough on tooling. With our new Tsugami, a part comes out every minute and a half, ready to go”.
In addition, eighteen years ago, a young Sherri Aragon applied for a part time job while her young children were in school. Today, Sherri oversees the entire day to day running of the shop and office, keeping the business running smoothly, so quotes go out, orders come in and quality parts go out to their customers’ exacting standards.
SL’s machine line up, in addition to their new Tsugami, includes two Okuma CNC lathes, a Cubic lathe for speed with small parts, and a FADAL CNC mill. While SL makes precision aircraft quality parts, the shop also makes several different parts for the sport fishing industry, which is a serious hobby for Steve.
But at heart, SL is a job shop, turning out commercial and aircraft parts, tube assemblies, connectors, flanges, couplings, and hose fittings.
Steve Lee’s business philosophy can be summed up with a quote by Winston Churchill, which is printed on his business cards: “It is no use saying, We are doing our best. You must succeed at doing what is necessary”.
Article & Photos Contributed by SL Engineering Company