Compass Shop in Minnesota Goes High Tech on Top
Winona, MN – July 25, 2023 – Douglas Machining Services announced Tuesday that it has completed the installation of a new elastomeric roof coating on its Winona, MN facility. The new roof is a foundational investment that the company’s co-general managers say will help provide a great home for the company’s top-of-the-line machines.
The new roof will do a better job against inclement weather and provide sun reflection during the summer to decrease heat load on shop’s HVAC system.
“Our building is great,” explained Ben Kubis, Douglas’s General Manager – Operations. “But with all-metal construction, having just screws holding everything together, the potential always exists for leaks. So, we decided to be proactive and add a polymer coating to keep out the rain and snow.”
Douglas’s 18,000 square foot shop in Winona is a metal building originally constructed in 2001 and expanded in 2015 to reach its current configuration. The original roof was also metal in construction.
After solicitating proposals from various roofing specialty contractors, Douglas selected Reliant Coatings of Holmen, WI to do the job. Reliant proposed an elastomeric, acrylic, monolithic roof coating with a bright white finish.
“We got tons of interest from various contractors for this project,” said Christina Douglas, the company’s General Manager – Commercial who teams with Ben to run Douglas Machining. “But Ben and I felt the Reliant proposal was the best one for us. And we are very happy with the job they did. Reliant even gave us a video showing each stage of the project: Douglas New Roof Video
“We continue to need additional capacity to serve our customers. Fortunately for us, Compass is eager to invest in new equipment when the demand is there.”
Douglas is an operating company of Compass Precision, a Charlotte-based manufacturer of custom, close-tolerance metal components for mission critical applications.
The latest machinery investment Compass has made at Douglas was a Milltronics VM6030IL vertical machining center with 3-axis capabilities added in October of last year (Douglas Machining Takes Delivery of New Vertical Machining Center (October 18, 2022) – Compass Precision, LLC). The company already had two similar units from Milltronics along with one of the manufacturer’s VM6030XP machines and four VM5025IL models.
“We are very pleased with Douglas Machining’s performance since we acquired the company in 2021,” said Gary Holcomb, Compass Precision’s CEO. “And we will continue investing at Douglas to expand its capabilities and capacity.
Douglas Machining specializes in producing intricate custom metal components for a wide variety of industrial and specialty markets in the upper Midwest and throughout the entire United States. The firm operates from its facility in Winona, MN, a picturesque town along the Mississippi river about 115 miles southeast of Minneapolis. The company is home to eleven vertical machining centers, ten multi-tasking mill/turn units, three lathes, one wire EDM machine, and two coordinate measuring machines.
Compass Precision was founded in 2019 with the purchase of three precision CNC machining companies in North Carolina – Advanced Machining & Tooling (Salisbury, NC); Quality Products & Machine (Charlotte, NC); and Tri-Tec Industries (Charlotte, NC). Compass added Gray Manufacturing Technologies (Denver, NC) to the fold in August 2020, then acquired Douglas Machining Services in March 2021.
Since then, Compass has purchased three more operating companies to bring its total to eight. Compass acquired R&D Machine (Oldsmar, FL) in April 2022, Strom Manufacturing (North Plains, OR) in July 2022, and Bergeron Machine (Westford, MA) in April 2023.
For more information about Douglas Machining Services and Compass Precision, please contact Gary Holcomb, Compass CEO at [email protected].