About this industry
A machine builder or skid packager buys instrumentation as a design-in component — it has to fit the envelope, speak the controls language, and stay available for the life of the build; a plant engineer buys the same lines to keep utilities, hydraulics, and panels running. Prater Technical Partners supplies that component layer across the Badger Meter family (flow, hydraulic test, gas detection), Aspeq electric heating and Hi-Heat flexible heaters, WIKA-ST pressure and force sensors, Raytek embedded infrared sensing, CSZ test chambers, and Reuland Electric machine-drive motors. This page is a deliberate cross-section of a broad line card — the series below are the ones equipment builders and plant teams design in most often. Prater Technical works with you to spec each one from the drawing, the duty cycle, and the controls interface.
- Overhead crane & hoist drives, held on every stop—Reuland Crane & Hoist Motors·Reuland Brake Motors
- Press, shear & high-inertia drive starts under control—Reuland Wound Rotor·Reuland NEMA Design D High-Slip
- Conveyor, mixer & agitator gearmotor drives—Reuland Gear Motors
- Platform, hopper & batching weight control—WIKA-ST F3203 Bending-Beam
- Robot-gripper & tight-assembly force measurement—WIKA-ST Compact Load Cells
- Custom IR panels & zoned IR ovens built into production lines—Solar Custom OEM IR Panels·Solar Multi-Zone IR Ovens
- Oven, dryer & autoclave process-air heating—Indeeco Process Air·Heatrex Process Air
- Die-block & platen heating on presses & forming tools—Indeeco Bolt Heaters
- Parts-wash & quench-tank temperature maintenance—Indeeco Over-the-Side
- Viscosity control & low-watt-density tank heating—Hi-Heat Freeze Protection·Indeeco Tank Heaters
- Lube low-flow alarms & pump-protection interlocks—Hedland Flow-Alert
- Tensile testing & production-line-integrated chambers—CSZ Specialty & Custom
- Pre-entry, exposure & leak-survey portable gas checks—ATi D16 PortaSens III
- Known-good solar front ends for OEM & integrator builds—SunWize PVK Kits
FAQ: instrumentation & components for industrial OEMs
Which flow meters are designed for OEM machine and skid integration?
Several lines are built for exactly that. Blancett 1100 and QuikSert turbines are cataloged for OEM and skid integration — QuikSert drops between existing flanges where face-to-face space is tight. Vision compact meters push-fit into machine builds for dosing and dispensing down to micro-dose rates, and stainless Industrial Oval Gear meters drop into compact dosing and batching packages with no upstream straight pipe. Start at the flow meters page.
What do you supply for hydraulic power units and test benches?
Flo-tech covers the hydraulic-test side: Classic turbine sensors on pump, motor, and cylinder circuits, Activa and Ultima arrays built into a machine or skid, and PFM6 and MC4000 portable testers for field troubleshooting and efficiency baselining. Hedland variable-area meters give a direct flow check on oil lines, and WIKA-ST rod-end load cells measure cylinder and actuator force. See Flo-tech and Hedland.
Can Prater Technical supply heaters built into our own product?
Yes — that is a core OEM duty across the heating lines. Hi-Heat flexible heaters (silicone rubber, polyimide, and other substrates) are built to your drawing and bond into the assembly; Indeeco and Heatrex tubular and finned elements are supplied as sub-assemblies to equipment builders; and Solar Products builds custom infrared panels integrated into OEM machinery and production lines. Start at the electric heating page.
Do you handle pressure transducers and load cells to an OEM spec?
Yes. The WIKA-ST SP007 platform is customer-configurable — range, output, and process port to order — for machine-builder pressure points, and the general-industrial transmitter families cover hydraulic, pneumatic, and process pressure on a PLC. On the force side, compact and subminiature load cells fit robot grippers and tight assemblies, and reaction-torque sensors handle end-of-line torque audit. See the WIKA-ST page.
What do you offer for production test and reliability screening?
CSZ builds the test wall: HALT/HASS chambers for production stress screening that catches latent manufacturing defects, thermal-shock chambers for bonded-assembly and dissimilar-material testing, and Z-Plus reach-in chambers for QC and incoming-inspection conditioning. Heavy-duty industrial freezers also handle shrink-fit assembly — chilling shafts and bearings to set interference fits. See the CSZ page.
Building a machine, packaging a skid, or running the plant that uses them? Talk to Scott — send directly to Scott Prater at scott@pratertechnical.com, or call him directly at 917-580-0878 during business hours.
Compiled by Prater Technical Partners.