“At the Elizabethtown-Hardin County Industrial Foundation (EHCIF), we have the great honor of representing an economic powerhouse in the Bluegrass State. From manufacturing to defense to health care, Elizabethtown and Hardin County’s strong, diverse economy attracts incredible opportunities to our region. We invite you to explore Elizabethtown and Hardin County using the resources on this site and contact us if we can be of assistance.”
Enprotech Industrial Technologies has been a part of the Elizabethtown industry community since 1981.
The Kentucky division of the company is at 223 Peterson Drive in Elizabethtown. Joe Wimsatt operates a lathe last week at Enprotech in Elizabethtown while working on a screw for a large press. Jill Pickett/The News Enterprise
Rick Robertson, manager of Kentucky Operations, said the company originally started as a privately owned business in Lansing, Michigan, in 1941 to repair crankshafts for stamping equipment.
Steel was in short supply during World War II and the company came up with a way to weld repair and make repaired cranks instead of buying them new, he said.
The Elizabethtown facility repairs metal stamping equipment mostly from the automotive and appliance industries, Robertson said.
The facility has a 100-ton lifting capacity to pick up heavy parts.
“We’re kind of like a large welding and machine shop,” Robertson said.
The facility has 48 employees that include mechanics who take machines apart and put them back together, engineers who often redesign or modify equipment or parts to make them better and an inspection department that prints components to know how they are used, Robertson said.
The 60,000-square foot building includes manufacturing space, storage, office space and a welding building.
Some of the machines Enprotech works on can weigh up to 500,000 pounds or more and the components that make up the machine are heavy and could weigh 300,000 pounds on their own, he said.
“If you see a big rig going down the road with 21 axles on it, the rig might have something on it for us,” Robertson said. “Anyplace that makes a metal part for the automotive or appliance industry, th
at’s who we work for.”
The company also does a lot of work in the customer’s facility.
If a customer has a broken press, the company sends employees from the facility to take it apart to figure out what’s wrong, he said. The employees then fix the machine on site if they can or bring it back to the Elizabethtown site to be repaired.
Some pieces are shipped in to be repaired and returned.
During the repair process, Enprotech employees clean an
d inspect the equipment. Then, an engineer designs how to fix it and a release order is sent to the shop to weld, machine or put it back together, Robertson said.
“Most things that we work on you can’t hold in your hands,” he said.
The press machines they work on create parts for cars, pots and pans, ice trays, dash boards and more, Robertson said. These presses make metal parts, plastic molds and aluminum components.
Odds are residents own something that has been made with equipment that’s been worked on by Enprotech, he said.
A lot of the industry the company works with is in the south and
Elizabethtown is a good location to serve the south, Robertson said. More and more industries are moving to Kentucky as well, he added.
“We cover all of the southeastern United States,” he said, which includes south of Indianapolis and east of the Mississippi.
Some of the companies Enprotech works with are in Elizabethtown.
For the field service of their company, the employees can service machines on site with portable mills and boring bar equipment, Robertson said.
Enprotech also does service work and is a sales representative for a Japanese company.
“We have a relationship with a Japanese forging company who makes forging presses and we represent them here in U.S.,” Robertson said.
Becca Owsley can be reached at 270-505-1740 or bowsley@thenewsenterprise.com. Reprinted with permission from The News Enterprise.
