Graymills to be Featured on "How It's Made"

Graymills, the company you probably associate with inking systems, pumps and parts washers is about to be featured on NBC’s “How It’s Made” TV program on Thursday, June 11. It turns out there’s actually a bit more to Graymills than we see in the printing industry, so packagePRINTING caught up with Craig Shields, president and chief engineer at Graymills, to get a bit more of the story.

Shields has gained some recognition with the NBC affiliate in his local Chicago market as one of the “voices of small business” in Windy City news programs. That gained the attention of NBC producers who thought Graymills would be a good candidate for the “How It’s Made” series and went to visit.

Graymills—and parts washing—stand out for a couple of reasons, explains Shields. “First, parts washing touches people’s lives in ways they aren’t even aware of,” he says. “Everything that is manufactured is thoroughly washed and cleaned before it is painted or packaged.” That means that virtually everything in your home and business went through some type of washing process, and it was very possibly done with a Graymills product.

“Second, the parts washing process flies in the face of the claim that ‘we don’t make anything in America anymore,’” says Shields. “Manufacturing has been growing in the U.S. with a 4 to 5 percent compound annual growth rate. And everything that is manufactured needs to be thoroughly cleaned, usually multiple times during the manufacturing process. Our products are all American-made and nearly all of them go to American manufacturing companies.”

Graymills makes a wide array of solvent, aqueous and ultrasonic parts washers that fill a host of needs in many industries. To see how they are made and what they do, tune in to NBC on June 11 and catch “How It’s Made.”