Acme Manufacturing continues to create innovative solutions to some of the most complex finishing problems
Having provided high-quality tools to the metal finishing industry since 1910, there’s no better surface treatment problem solver than Acme Manufacturing (Acme). With extensive knowledge built over more than a century in the industry, it’s no surprise that Acme is the preferred supplier across a broad spectrum of industries and applications. Whether it’s deburring, polishing, buffing, grinding, or the company’s innovative centerless grinding technology, Acme strives to solve the most complex customer problems.
As the industry has evolved, Acme has shifted to provide robotic material removal for grinding, polishing, buffing, and deburring, offering significant cost savings and greater value to its customers. To delve deeper into the company’s history, capabilities, and current developments, we sit down with President and CEO, Fritz Carlson.
“Acme was founded in 1910 by my great-grandfather, Gustav, who was a Swedish immigrant and a tool maker interested in tooling design and machine tools,” Fritz opens. “Although we’ve never deviated from material removal applications, a majority of our finishing systems over the last 40 years are robotic, using six axis robotic arms to conduct the process. We’re known as problem solvers; customers approach us with their finishing challenges, and we engineer a solution that automates what they’re currently doing manually.
“Today, we serve around 20 global industries, and we’re particularly strong in the aviation, power generation, and medical devices markets, as well as foundry. We’re heavily involved in the aviation market on the jet engine side, and we have an innovation center in Singapore, the largest MRO aviation hub in the world, to focus on developing robotic finishing solutions for the jet engine component MRO market. We also have a strong reputation for general castings and consumer products like plumbing, cookware, hand tools, and lock hardware, as well as in the transportation sector where we supply automation for the markets of heavy truck, off-road construction, and agricultural equipment. 
“Our extensive capabilities ensure we can custom engineer finishing processes that solve customers’ problems, and we’re the only company in the world to build our signature centerless grinding machine, the Acme Model 1210 multi-station abrasive belt OD grinding system,” he continues. “Centerless grinding is a fantastic technology as it allows grinding and polishing to be completed in a single pass and part diameter changeover time is less than five minutes, due to servo motor positioning on each grinding station. Most of our customers using these machines are in the hydraulic cylinder industry and are located across the globe, primarily in North America, Europe, India, and China.”
Considering the company’s longstanding heritage, we ask Fritz what makes Acme stand out from the competition. “The business we are in is challenging and you need to have passion, perseverance, and persistence in order to succeed,” Fritz states. “We stand behind our products; people come to us with difficult problems requiring, sometimes one-off bespoke systems, and we pride ourselves on never walking away from our customers. That’s why we have so many repeat clients, as people trust our expertise to engineer the best possible solution and our technology makes our customers more profitable.
“Although we started with manual finishing equipment, our ability to adapt and modernize our technology as times have progressed has ensured our continued position at the forefront of the market. We shifted our business to robotic automation starting in the mid-eighties as these technologies became commercialized. We are constantly evaluating how to engineer more user-friendly finishing systems by trying to simplify robotic programming and technical aspects to enhance user experience.”
Such continued innovation and agility are crucial in an evolving market, and as Fritz then explains, material removal is just a small part of overall robotic application opportunities. “Processes like welding, painting, and material handling have benefited from automation for some time now, while material removal and surface treatment are in their infancy in comparison,” he confirms. “We’re in the early stages of partnering with a European integration company that specializes in laser ablation surface treatment, for instance. This is a great opportunity for us to collaborate with an expert in this field and expand our horizons as we learn more about how our offerings can complement each other and have a greater impact on our customers and their operations.
“I’m constantly learning about new trends, industries, and opportunities, leveraging a network I’ve built throughout my career to identify where the market is heading. For instance, we know that the world’s population is aging, and research suggests the average person will need two medical implants in their lifetime. We’ve been servicing the medical device industry for more than 35 years, but we know the market is constantly growing because of global demographics. As a smaller company, we can quickly adapt our processes to respond to this increased demand.”
Elaborating on Acme’s success, Fritz is keen to share the partnerships and projects that have been crucial to the company’s evolution. “We have an extensive ecosystem of companies that we’ve worked with for decades, such as FANUC, who have been one of our strategic partners for more than 40 years,” he says. “It’s crucial that we maintain strong partnerships as our integrated robotic systems depend on integrating world class products and components manufactured by other companies, into our systems.
“We’re fortunate to have completed some incredible projects, and what’s great about Acme is our ability to take on small as well as very large projects where we can partner with other suppliers to bring greater value to the customer. We’re incredibly proud to have worked on one of the largest projects in our industry, which saw us install more than 200 robots for finishing applications in multiple plants in Asia over a four-year period. We’ve recently completed a large, three-year contract for approximately 40 robotic cells for a privately held, family-owned business that was looking to reshore its products from Asia to North America.”
With Fritz’s leadership, Acme is sure to experience continued success, and as our conversation draws to a close, Fritz shares his vision for the future. “2026 appears to be a very solid year for Acme, and we have a healthy backlog across multiple industries as we head into the new year,” he concludes. “We’ve seen more certainty in the market in the second half of 2025, and we’re optimistic that the material removal industry is heading for explosive growth. With many manufacturing companies facing labor shortages, automation is a key strategy for navigating this issue. Demographics drive the global economy, and as companies adapt how they evaluate return on investment, automation is changing the manufacturing landscape. With the market changing so rapidly, it’s crucial that we constantly explore new technologies as automation evolves, including the implementation of AI into Acme’s business and our offerings. This better positions us for the next 115 years.”