Eleven people, six finishing cells, one metrology bench that never goes more than two days between calibration checks. inflpanjlott.com started in a two-bay garage with a surface grinder that had a belt from 1987 on it, and it still runs on the same rule: measure before you promise, and measure again before you pack.
The first job was a bracket for a pump maker who had been told by three shops that nobody would hold his tolerance. We held it, the bracket went into production, and that customer is still sending lots — four years after that, the original fixture we built for them is still in the rack, which tells you more about our fixtures than any brochure line will.
Most of what inflpanjlott.com does today came from the same place: a customer brings something nobody else wanted, we learn the material, we buy or build the fixture, and then we get asked to do it again. The double-disc lapping machine exists because of a medical customer who needed 0.01 mm on 900 mm plates. The urgent second shift exists because a fastener plant once called at 8am about a line that had stopped.
We are not the cheapest shop in the country and we do not try to be. We are the shop that tells you the truth about what is reachable on your part, then holds the number we gave you. That is the whole business model, honestly. It just happens to be a good one.
To take parts that other shops call difficult and hand them back finished, measured and documented — and to tell a customer early, in plain words, when a finish they asked for is not physically reachable in that alloy. The measurement part is the easy half. The telling people no part is what actually builds a supplier relationship that survives a bad quarter.
We measure everything that leaves the building: roughness, flatness, coating thickness, salt spray hours where it applies. The report is signed by the operator who ran the job, because a name on a sheet means somebody is accountable for it. If a reading drifts, inflpanjlott.com can tell you which machine and which shift produced it — that traceability is the difference between a finishing supplier and a vendor with a polish booth.
There are eleven of us, but these four are the names that end up in your emails and on your reports. They are also the four who will tell you when your part is a bad idea for a particular finish.
Lead grinding technician, nine years on the floor. She built the soft-jaw fixturing system that lets us hold thin stamped panels without marking them, and she is unreasonably good at predicting where a casting will move as the stock comes off. If a part needs three grinding setups instead of one, she is the one who tells you before the job starts, not after the invoice.
Electro finishing lead, running the polish and passivation tanks since the second year. He keeps a lab notebook of bath chemistry going back years, which is the closest thing this shop has to institutional memory. He is the reason inflpanjlott.com can promise consistent Ra on a repeat order two years after the first one, and he will happily explain why we refuse to speed up a plating cycle.
Powder line and blast cell, six years in. He handles the color matching work and keeps the physical RAL and Pantone sample board that customers actually pick from instead of a screen. He also runs the robotic blasting head, which means large fabricated frames get an even finish without anyone holding a nozzle for six hours. Ask him about masking, and he will show you three different tapes and explain exactly why one of them is the right one.
Quality and documentation, the person who signs most of the reports. She built the current measurement sheet format after a customer auditor asked for lot-level traceability, and she maintains the calibration schedule for every instrument on the bench. If a question comes in about a reading from three months ago, she is the one who finds the machine, the shift and the operator. Customers tend to stop emailing questions once they meet her.
Numbers are only useful if you know what they apply to, so here they are with their limits. Tighter than this and we quote it as a special job, not as a standard.
| Parameter | Standard | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Flatness, plates to 900 mm | 0.01 mm | Double-disc lapping |
| Surface roughness, stainless | Ra 0.2 – 0.4 µm | Electropolished route |
| Surface roughness, mild steel | Ra 0.8 – 1.6 µm | Ground and polished |
| Powder film thickness | 60 – 120 µm | Dry-film gauge, logged |
| Hard chrome thickness | 0.03 – 0.15 mm | Measured, then ground back |
| First article lead time | 48 hours | Photo plus measurement sheet |