The United States military trusts just one company to make specific parts protecting soldiers at war.

CAMtech, the precision manufacturing company that was founded in Auburn and expanded to include facilities around the nation - is the only manufacturing company in the world to make the armor plates and blasting containers that equip military humvees.

“It's a pretty great honor for us, actually,” said Auburn CAMtech general manager Mike Werner.

The city's facility was created in 1989 by native Auburnian Ron Weaver, who Werner said just wanted to base the company in the place he grew up in. Since, Weaver, still the company's sole owner, has expanded CAMtech to include three primary locations in Fort Worth, Texas; Jupiter, Fla. and the Auburn facility.

Manufacturing in Auburn is an important part of the city's economy, said Cynthia Aikman, Auburn planning and economic development program manager.

“Many of our manufacturers are sub contractors to larger customers in the region,” she said, which in turn creates connections to Auburn. “CAMtech happens to have customers that go farther than the region - they are more nationwide.”

Yet, while a recent fear of plant closings looms in the area, CAMtech's continued reputation for quality parts ensures this plant won't be closing anytime soon. The 30,000 square-foot plant, with 35 employees, is planning to expand by another 15,000 square feet this summer.

“There is a lot of work out there, and we can get a big deal of it; we just need the capacity and the room,” Werner said.

That is good news for Auburn. Aikman said currently area manufacturers have a need for 135,000 square feet of open space in the city for expansion.

“It's wonderful that CAMtech is going to build, because we (the city) don't have enough vacant space,” she said.

While CAMtech has plans for the future, there is still a problem facing manufacturers throughout the region. Werner said one of the biggest difficulties is finding skilled people to do the jobs required at a company like CAMtech.

“Every manufacturer says if the right person walked through the door, they would hire them,” Aikman said, remembering a situation when a company received about 100 applications with only two qualified for an interview.

Werner doesn't believe manufacturing in Auburn is pushed enough, and unfortunately that many people in the area don't even know CAMtech is here.

“It's a shame,” he said. “We are a premier job shop.”

And as a premier job shop, they must not only work hard but hire the right people to remain the best at what they do.

Therefore, CAMtech is always looking for ways to stay ahead of the competition.

“We try to stay very diverse in what we chose to run as products so they can't send jobs offshore,” Werner said. “(We) want to stay above the norm of normal machine shops.”

The Auburn plant does just that, taking products and manufacturing them to precise specification, testing for quality assurance and changing with the trends and materials used to create products that may, up until recently, have always been made a certain way.

For example, a device called a sump that CAMtech manufactures for general aviation has switched to plastic, which Werner said is a huge advantage in the industry strictly for weight issues. Sumps sit on the bottom of an airplane engine to hold the oil, so the lighter the better.

Sumps are made manually, but almost every other part made at the plant is done by a computer numerical control machine, meaning the operator simply loads the part and pushes a button, Werner said.

The machines are huge, some bigger than others, and are spread throughout the plant roaring as they skillfully forge the parts CAMtech has been commissioned to make by one of its many customers. Parts such as cylinder heads, barrels and crank cases are all made in huge machines that are networked to one central computer that downloads the product specifications to each machine.

But the process really starts with chief engineer Dale Roberts, who designs all the processes and programs used on the floor. Roberts imports an image from a customer, such as the Department of Defense, Superior Air or Canondale Bicycles, and he is then able to flip the image to any configuration and see what exactly needs to be done.

CAMtech quotes the customer on the part requested, gives an estimated time frame for making the part and it then goes to the machines. A traveler report tells the machine operator the part number and requirements. They then punch in a code and the machine downloads the information, and the part is created.

Every step of the process is documented.

“Think about it, if there is a problem with a plane or an engine, they have a way to come back and we have a way to document,” Werner explained. “Every part is serialized, so we can tell anyone how it was made.”

That is the quality assurance the FAA trusts enough to buy almost all its parts within the United States - which keeps CAMtech in business.

That and the fact that CAMtech's CNC machines are some of the best, Werner said. “It's like buying a Mercedes or a Cadillac in the power industry, that's who we buy machines from.”

Each CNC machine makes a different part, larger machines for larger parts, and vice versa, but they are all part of one process. What's impressive is in the end, all the individual parts will fit perfectly together to make one larger piece.

“It all fits in there and bolts up and then you take off in it and fly,” Werner said, in the instance of airplane parts.

Staff writer Laura Boyce can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 236 or at laura.boyce@lee.net