When the OEM no longer stocks the part, when the model has been out of production for thirty years, when the only documentation left is a faded drawing in someone’s file cabinet — that is where we start. Send us a sample, a print, or a model number, and we reverse-engineer the part and machine a replacement to OEM dimensional spec.
A substation built in 1980 is full of parts that nobody manufactures anymore. The OEM was acquired. The product line was discontinued. The drawings were lost in a warehouse fire. The 50-cent contact that used to ship next-day from a Pittsburgh stockroom now requires a six-month engineering effort to source — if anyone will quote it at all.
That is the world we live in. Most of the parts we ship every week were last manufactured by the original OEM before our customers’ engineers were born. We are not a distributor. We are the people machining the replacement, in our own shop, from the original drawing or from a sample we measure ourselves.
We carry stock or build to order for every OEM family in the catalog. The list below covers the parts we make most often. If your manufacturer is not on it, send us a model number anyway — if there is a sample or a print, we can reverse-engineer it.
LTC contacts and complete kits, reverse-engineered to original GE dimensions.
Reactance-type LTC parts. Eaton dropped the line decades ago; we kept making them.
The 550 series is one of the most installed LTC families in the US. Cooper dropped support; the parts didn’t.
Allis-Chalmers became Siemens decades ago. We still build the original contact geometry.
FPE was acquired and the LTC line dropped. We reverse-engineer the contacts from original drawings.
Discontinued OCB contacts that nobody else stocks. We do.
Transfer-switch contacts and selector-switch parts for Moloney transformers.
Niche but in-service in many distribution substations. We machine the baffles and contacts.
European LTC parts machined to the original Reinhausen drawing.
Every reverse-engineering job follows the same five steps. The lead time varies with complexity — a contact finger takes a week, a cast operating-mechanism part takes longer — but the process is the same.
Even a broken one. We measure the geometry directly with a CMM, confirm the material with spectrometer analysis, and machine an exact replacement. No interpretation required.
A scan, a PDF, even a faded paper print. We translate it into a modern CAD model and machine from there. Dimensions and tolerances follow the original spec.
If we have built the part before or the design is documented in our archive, a model number is enough. A photo confirms we are talking about the same part.
Substation contacts are not made of any one metal. Silver-plated copper for low-current paths. Tungsten-copper for arcing surfaces. Beryllium-copper for spring tension. Bronze for bushings and pivots. Stainless for shafts in corrosive environments.
Reverse-engineering is only as good as the material decision. We confirm the alloy on every job — either from the OEM drawing, from spectrometer analysis of the original sample, or from our own archive of measurements on parts we have built before.
Material certifications are available on every job. Some utilities want them on every part; some only need them when an inspector asks. Either way, we keep the cert paperwork with the work order, and we can supply it before, with, or after delivery.
For new-make parts where the original drawing called out a specific OEM material grade, we match that grade. Where the OEM grade is no longer commercially available, we substitute the closest equivalent and document the substitution.
A utility customer had a cast operating-mechanism part fail on a Siemens SF6 breaker. Siemens no longer made it. The repair could not wait six months for an alternative source. We measured the broken part, designed a stronger billet-machined replacement, machined it in our shop, and our field crew installed it on the breaker. The full turnkey job, from sample in the door to installed in the substation, took less than three weeks.
Send a sample to our Palm Harbor shop, or send a model number and a photo through the quote form. We respond within one business day with a path forward and a lead-time estimate.