How did Sheaves, Inc. become the leading supplier of sheaves for the wire & cable industry?

By listening to customers. It started with a serious request for help.

In 1990, Charlie Morison was selling new and used machinery as an independent sales rep. One day an engineer at Davis Standard asked him if he knew a source for plastic dancer & accumulator sheaves colored Safety Orange for OSHA compliance.

OSHA regulations were pressuring machinery manufacturers to seek an affordable way to be compliant. So this wasn’t a casual request. One regulation stipulated that rotating machinery parts should be painted safety orange and the guards for such parts should be painted safety yellow.

Charlie looked for a plastic material that was available in orange and also suitable for wire & cable processing. The closest he found was Gar-Dur, a yellow UHMW (ultra high molecular weight polyethylene) plastic. Not orange, but deemed close enough. A workable solution had been found.

Gar-Dur turned out to be an exceptional material for process sheaves used in wire & cable factories and Sheaves, Inc was born in 1992. Sheaves, Inc. quickly became known as the "Yellow Sheaves Guys".

Getting to know Charlie

Charlie and I worked together in both industry and civic organizations for several years. Once I moved to Mystic, we became good friends.

Charlie got my son to go out for football just before he started 9th grade. Then Charlie got me involved in the Stonington High Athletic Boosters Club. Pretty soon he and I were running it.

The big event of the year was selling lobster dinners at the 3 day Blessing of The Fleet festival in Stonington Borough. Two weeks of preparation, three hectic days and 1500 dinners later, we would net $12,000 to $15,000 to support the high school sports programs.

It was great fun and introduced me to many great people in town – from fishermen to investment bankers. Enough fun that Charlie and I continued with the Boosters Club for several years after our sons had graduated.

Charlie continued to run Sheaves until the end of 2002 when he decided it was time to retire. The appeal of a business built on such a simple product that never-the-less required special expertise was irresistible. I bought the business.

Listening to customers brought new growth

To me, product development has always been the fun part of engineering. What’s the problem and what solution can we offer? I was anxious to grow the newly acquired business so I followed Charlie’s example – I listened to customers for product ideas.

ProcessSheaves.com had always been a custom sheave business – products designed and manufactured order by order. Some customers asked for a line of stock sheaves with off-the-shelf deliveries.

It was a good idea so we expanded the product line by adding a broad line of stock sheaves to what had been solely a custom business. These 30 stock sheaves come in aluminum, ceramic coated aluminum, cast nylon and UHMW materials, sizes from 3 inch to 48 inches, and all ship within 24 hours.

Now factories could turn to a single source for all their sheave needs.

Most recently we developed the Structural Composite Construction or SCC sheaves. The SCC product line offers a wide range of diameters, widths and bearing sizes in a superior sheave and at a competitive cost.

OEM customers often found the inflexibility of our stock sheaves compromised their designs. For example, if they needed a 48 inch sheave for 2" cable, our 4 inch sheave designed for cables up to 4 inches is wider then desired. If 10 of our standard 48" sheaves are stacked side by side in an accumulator, it becomes a foot wider than one made with SCC sheaves tailored to the actual requirements.

We designed these sheaves and their tooling so we can quickly make sheaves to custom widths in increments of1/4 inch. All the tooling is not yet complete but once it is, these semi-custom sheaves will be available in 4 weeks.

In the 24 through 48 inch diameters SCC is a better sheave than nylon and polyethylene sheaves – stronger, lighter, truer running, better wearing, more temperature and water resistant, and free from warping for life.

Expanding beyond sheaves

The next question from customers was "Do you make stands for mounting your sheaves?" We didn’t but the question led to the Modular Hardware product line.

We developed simple floor stands with vertical 2 x 2 square tubing. From another industry we borrowed a line of off-the-shelf Cross Blocks that rigidly clamp to these stands at adjustable heights. Used with optional shafts and extensions we provide, you can build custom mounting arrangements for one or more sheaves.

The stands and mounting hardware ship from stock with your sheave order. No engineering, dealing with a fabricator, or writing a dozen POs to get all the pieces you need. One order and in as little as 72 hours you can have the stand in place supporting your sheave exactly where you need it.

That was followed by a line of box rollers and cable guides. This product line has grown to 14 different styles and sizes of cable guides. Due to the tremendous variety available, we stock at the component level so we can assemble exactly the unit you need and ship within a few days.

The future will bring new products and improvements to existing products from the same source – responding to your problems.

I needed a person with the same customer centric, problem solving skills

Within months of taking over sheaves, I turned to Dick Cazeault as a resource for special projects. Dick’s background is similar to Stew’s with extensive factory experience at Brand-Rex and Montrose, followed by several years in the machinery side at Webster Machine and Arion.

With Dick’s added inputs, the overall business grew rapidly in two distinctly different markets – the original process sheaves for wire & cable factories and the new (for us) market of lifting sheaves for cranes, hoists.

Back to basics and a new website is born

The lifting sheave market grew to overshadow the process sheaves. Navigating the site to find the specific products you need was getting too cumbersome.

So we created this new site www.ProcessSheaves.com exclusively for process sheaves.

Here in one place you can find all the products you need for manufacturing, processing or installation of wire & cable or similar linear products. You can rely on Sheaves, Inc as an experienced, knowledgeable resource for sheaves and related equipment to guide, tension and transport your products.

PS

If you don’t find the solution you need for your wire guiding, tensioning and transporting problem, call us at +1.866-344-5599 or email us at sales@ProcessSheaves.com. You may the inspiration for our next product development.