![]() | |
![]() Headquarters in Minneapolis | |
Company type | Public |
---|---|
Founded | 1926 |
Founder | Russell Gray |
Headquarters | , United States |
Area served | Worldwide |
Key people |
|
Products | Fluid and Powder Handling Equipment |
Revenue | ![]() |
![]() | |
![]() | |
Total assets | ![]() |
Total equity | ![]() |
Number of employees | 4,000 (2023) |
Divisions | Contractor, Industrial, Process |
Website | graco |
Footnotes /references [1] [2] |
Graco Inc. is an American industrial company that specializes in the development and manufacturing of fluid-handling systems and products. The company is headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and markets its products to customers worldwide. [3]
Russell Gray, a Minneapolis parking lot attendant, founded Gray Company, Inc. in 1926 with his brother Leil Gray to produce and sell Russell's air-powered grease gun, invented in response to cold weather making hand-powered grease guns inoperable. [3] Sales their first year of operation were $35,000. [3]
By 1941, annual sales had reached $1 million. [3] They capitalized on opportunities in defense-based lubricating needs during World War II. After World War II, Graco began expanding outside of lubricant handling, developing a paint pump and direct-from-drum industrial fluids pumps.
By the mid-1950s they had expanded to $5 million in sales and 400 employees, and were servicing fluid handling needs in a wide variety of industries. [3]
Leil Gray died in 1958, and was succeeded as president by Harry A. Murphy. [3] He was succeeded in turn by David A Koch in 1962. [3] The company continued to expand, helped by the 1957 introduction of the airless spray gun. By 1969, when Gray Company went public and changed its name to Graco, it had annual sales of $33 million. [3]
After acquiring H. G. Fischer & Co, a manufacturer of electrostatic finishing products, sales continued to climb, reflecting an industry-wide shift in automobile painting from air-based to electrostatic technologies. [3] By 1979, sales had climbed to $100 million. [3]
In 1981, Graco started a joint-venture called Graco Robotics, Inc. (GRI) with Edon Finishing Systems. [3]
Graco currently has airless sprayers, line striping units, fine finish equipment, texture sprayers, roof coating rigs, and pressure washers on the Contractor Equipment Division (CED). [4]
In the Lubrication Equipment Division (LED), Graco produces automatic lubrication equipment, vehicle lubrication maintenance and repair equipment, and a variety of activators and switches for the lubrication process. [5]
In Graco's Industrial Products Division (IPD), there are a wide range of pneumatic, hydraulic, and electric pumps created to withstand tough finishing applications. IPD also has different fine-finish pump packages which can spray with air, assisted by air, or airless. [6]
Graco is a company that specializes in fluid handling systems and equipment. They are known for producing a wide range of products used in various industries, including manufacturing, construction, automotive, and more. Some of their main product categories include:
TOP of Graco products is:
Graco serves a wide variety of markets, including painting, anti-corrosion, fluid transfer, gluing and sanitary applications, automotive, aeronautic, body refinish, wood, building and construction, and marine. [7] They distribute through a global network of equipment dealers and retail stores. [8]
A lubricant is a substance that helps to reduce friction between surfaces in mutual contact, which ultimately reduces the heat generated when the surfaces move. It may also have the function of transmitting forces, transporting foreign particles, or heating or cooling the surfaces. The property of reducing friction is known as lubricity.
A diaphragm pump is a positive displacement pump that uses a combination of the reciprocating action of a rubber, thermoplastic or teflon diaphragm and suitable valves on either side of the diaphragm (check valve, butterfly valves, flap valves, or any other form of shut-off valves) to pump a fluid.
Spray painting is a painting technique in which a device sprays coating material through the air onto a surface. The most common types employ compressed gas—usually air—to atomize and direct the paint particles.
ZF Friedrichshafen AG, also known as ZF Group, originally Zahnradfabrik Friedrichshafen, and commonly abbreviated to ZF, is a German technology manufacturing company that supplies systems for passenger cars, commercial vehicles and industrial technology. It is headquartered in Friedrichshafen, in the south-west German state of Baden-Württemberg. Specializing in engineering, it is primarily known for its design, research and development, and manufacturing activities in the automotive industry and is one of the largest automotive suppliers in the world. Its products include driveline and chassis technology for cars and commercial vehicles, along with specialized plant equipment such as construction equipment. It is also involved in the rail, marine, defense and aviation industries, as well as general industrial applications. ZF has 162 production locations in 31 countries with approximately 168,700 (2023) employees.
A rotary atomizer is an automatic electrostatic paint applicator used in high volume, automatic production painting environments. Also called a 'paint bell', "rotary bell atomizer" or 'bell applicator', it is preferred for high volume paint application for its superior transfer efficiency, spray pattern consistency, and low compressed air consumption, when compared to a paint spray gun. It can be mounted in a fixed position, reciprocating arm, or an industrial robot.
Loctite is an American brand of adhesives, sealants, surface treatments, and other industrial chemicals that include acrylic, anaerobic, cyanoacrylate, epoxy, hot melt, silicone, urethane, and UV/light curing technologies. Loctite products are sold globally and are used in a variety of industrial and hobbyist applications.
A spray bottle is a bottle that can squirt, spray or mist fluids.
Automatic lubrication systems (ALS), also known as centralized lubrication systems (CLS), are mechanical devices used in industrial machines and engines to apply specified quantities of a lubricant to distribution points while the machine is operating.
A spray nozzle or atomizer is a device that facilitates the dispersion of a liquid by the formation of a spray. The production of a spray requires the fragmentation of liquid structures, such as liquid sheets or ligaments, into droplets, often by using kinetic energy to overcome the cost of creating additional surface area. A wide variety of spray nozzles exist, that make use of one or multiple liquid breakup mechanisms, which can be divided into three categories: liquid sheet breakup, jets and capillary waves. Spray nozzles are of great importance for many applications, where the spray nozzle is designed to have the right spray characteristics.
Industrial paint robots have been used for decades in automotive paint applications.
Phenyl ether polymers are a class of polymers that contain a phenoxy or a thiophenoxy group as the repeating group in ether linkages. Commercial phenyl ether polymers belong to two chemical classes: polyphenyl ethers (PPEs) and polyphenylene oxides (PPOs). The phenoxy groups in the former class of polymers do not contain any substituents whereas those in the latter class contain 2 to 4 alkyl groups on the phenyl ring. The structure of an oxygen-containing PPE is provided in Figure 1 and that of a 2, 6-xylenol derived PPO is shown in Figure 2. Either class can have the oxygen atoms attached at various positions around the rings.
Lincoln Industrial Corporation (Lincoln) is a manufacturer of automated lubrication systems, manual lubrication equipment and industrial pumping systems, and subsidiary of Svenska Kullagerfabriken AB (SKF). Founded in 1910, the company has been responsible for many of the inventions that established modern lubrication practices in automotive maintenance and industry.
JBT Corporation, or John Bean Technologies Corporation, is a food processing machinery and automated vehicle company. JBT Corporation was incorporated in 2008 when FMC Technologies divested its non-energy businesses. JBT Corporation is based in Chicago, Illinois. The company traces its history back to a company founded in 1884 by John Bean, an orchardist in Los Gatos, California.
Automatic lubrication systems (ALS), also known as centralized lubrication systems (CLS), are mechanical devices used in industrial machines and engines to apply specified quantities of a lubricant to distribution points while the machine is operating.
Plaster spraying allows a plasterer to skim a drywall more than five times faster than using a hand float to apply it. Although classic gypsum-based plaster can be sprayed if it is "spray grade," most plaster sprayers prefer the organic-based pre-mixed plaster packaged in a plastic bag because the plaster spraying machine does not need to be cleaned out after the job is finished, providing that plaster is kept moist. The pre-mixed plaster also has the advantage that any surplus can be recycled, almost eliminating waste, and plasterers do not need to haul water and mix the plaster from powder. A drywall skimmed with pre-mixed plaster can be painted in less than 24 hours, depending on the ambient temperature and humidity.
A spray is a dynamic collection of drops dispersed in a gas. The process of forming a spray is known as atomization. A spray nozzle is the device used to generate a spray. The two main uses of sprays are to distribute material over a cross-section and to generate liquid surface area. There are thousands of applications in which sprays allow material to be used most efficiently. The spray characteristics required must be understood in order to select the most appropriate technology, optimal device and size.
GGB manufactures self-lubricating, prelubricated plain bearings and tribological polymer coating for various industries and applications. It has production facilities in the U.S., Germany, France, Slovakia, Brazil and China.
Specialty chemicals are particular chemical products which provide a wide variety of effects on which many other industry sectors rely. Some of the categories of speciality chemicals are adhesives, agrichemicals, cleaning materials, colors, cosmetic additives, construction chemicals, elastomers, flavors, food additives, fragrances, industrial gases, lubricants, paints, polymers, surfactants, and textile auxiliaries. Other industrial sectors such as automotive, aerospace, food, cosmetics, agriculture, manufacturing, and textiles are highly dependent on such products.
Dimetcote is commonly used for steel corrosion resistance. It is generally reliable under humid or corrosive conditions. Because of this, Dimetcote is widely used in ships, power generation facilities, and marine, oil, and offshore structures.
Rotary atomizers use a high speed rotating disk, cup or wheel to discharge liquid at high speed to the perimeter, forming a hollow cone spray. The rotational speed controls the drop size. Spray drying and spray painting are the most important and common uses of this technology.