Page 26 - MetalForming July 2012

Photo courtesy Zierick Manufacturing
Tracing the Roots of the
Precision Metalforming
Association
As the Precision Metalforming Association celebrates its 70th year in 2012, we take a look at the roots of the association, which can be traced back to the Pressed Metal Association, born in 1913. PMA later became the Pressed Metal Institute and then the American Metal Stamping Association (AMSA). In 1972, AMSA celebrated its 30th anniversary by publishing the “History of the American Metal Stamping Association.” Here’s an abbreviated version of that historical record.
BY BRAD F. KUVIN, EDITOR
Late in 1942, a series of letters and unofficial meetings launched the Pressed Metal Institute (PMI), the direct ancestor of today’s Precision Metalforming Association (PMA). Organized officially in Cleveland, OH, with 42 char- ter member companies, PMI and the industry it represent- ed—the metal-stamping industry—faced a sizable public- image problem. That image problem is best summed up in the following excerpt from a letter delivered early in 1943 to a steel-industry executive by PMI member C. C. Caditz, Northern Metal Products Company, Franklin Park, IL:
“Our conversation last Monday was brutal. You said that you regard contract metal stampers as a bad bet to become long-range mill customers. It would be presumptuous of me to figuratively shout, ‘I will be a mill customer.’ Only God can foretell things. It would be a meaningless cry, anyway. What hurts is that everything I have tried to do—every course I have followed in my whole business life—has been discounted by that general ‘job stamper’ evaluation. I believe our American economy has progressed to the point where there is room for a basic, sound, businesslike, well-managed contract fabri- cating service, one that will always need dependable sources of steel. My work has been an extension of that belief. In The Pressed Metal Institute I see a means of building industry standards-of fostering technical advances, of encouraging research and educational progress, of cooperating with and
24 MetalForming/July 2012
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