The People Behind the Teeth
Engineers, machinists, and metallurgists — many here for decades
Vulcan Gearworks started in 1987 as a two-man shop in Cleveland's industrial Flats — one used hobbing machine, one promise: no gear leaves unmeasured. That promise outlived the first building, the second hobber, and three recessions.
Today we run a 6,500 m² plant where cutting, heat treatment, grinding, and metrology live under one roof. Keeping every process in-house isn't nostalgia; it's how a distortion problem discovered at 2 PM gets a corrected recipe by 6 PM instead of a three-week vendor loop.
We still measure everything. The instruments are just a few million times more precise than Karl's first micrometer.
Karl Vukic opens a two-man shop in Cleveland's Flats with a single used hobbing machine.
The first CNC gear cutters arrive; lead times fall from weeks to days.
AS9100 certification opens the door to aerospace actuation and accessory-drive work.
A Reishauer-anchored grinding cell brings AGMA 12 accuracy fully in-house.
Robot-tended cells run overnight, monitored from a single control room.
SHOP FLOOR SNAPSHOT
Grew up sweeping chips on this floor; now steers strategy and the aerospace book of business.
Runs the metrology lab and the IATF 16949 system — nothing ships past her without data.
27 years in gear geometry; wrote the internal DFM playbook our quotes are built on.
Vulcan is the only gear house we've never had to source-inspect. The paperwork is as clean as the flanks.
They caught a heat-treat distortion issue in our design before we did. That's a supplier you keep.
Planet carriers on week six, every six weeks, for four years running. Zero line stops.
Some shops cut a gear when a job demands it. Vulcan cuts gears all day, every day — which is why our setups are faster, our tolerances tighter, and our machinists able to look at a worn tooth and tell you exactly what killed it.
Work with us
Tour the shop, meet the engineers, or just send the print.