Associated Metal Finishers (AMF) - one of the leading suppliers of equipment that are used for electroplating and surface finishing – has chalked out expansion plan for growth. “Today we are under expansion and will be jointly working with several aerospace companies for setting up various chemical engineering projects all over India,” said the company official.

Recently, AMF had taken up the challenging chemical etching of titanium alloy turbine blades for a JV formed by Rolls Royce UK and Bharat Forge Ltd at Pune. This was a fully automatic line with PLC controllers and was successfully completed and tested at Pune.

Associated Metal Finishers was established in 1983 by Lincoln K Rowland, who had quit National Aerospace Laboratories. He started a factory in Bangalore to do several metal finishing procedures such as hard chrome plating, anodizing, electro less nickel plating and long life soldering bits. Later, the company diversified into manufacturing of complete plating and anodizing/metal finishing system. Its first client was Wendt India Ltd for nickel electro forming and etching line.

Associated Metal Finishers then ventured into PCB and other procedure. In 1996, it bagged the first solar photovoltaic line for Tata-BP Solar Ltd in Electronic City, Bangalore. At that time, it was the largest photovoltaic line in India (12 MW) and was completed in 1 year. AMF made similar lines for companies such as BEL, BHEL, Maharishi Solar Ltd etc.

Later, the company moved on to automatic and semi automatic systems. Associated Metal Finishers designed and manufactured the taper chemical milling on s/s 315 helicopter leading edge blades for Bell Helicopter USA which was a run-away success. “It was taper chemical milling at its very best,” added the company official.