Above: Lukjan Metal Products makes round, oval, square and rectangular pipes, elbows and angles, triangles, boxes, saddles, sleeves, pans and boots.
March, 2025- Lukjan Metal Products is an employee owned and operated business that has been manufacturing sheet metal pipe, duct and prefabricated fittings for the wholesale HVAC industry since 1964. The vast majority of the material processed is galvanized steel, but the company also handles black steel, stainless steel, aluminum and PVC.
The flagship factory in Conneaut, Ohio, consists of more than 270,000 square feet of manufacturing capacity. Since 2006, the company has grown through acquisitions and expansions. That year, Lukjan opened a 240,000-square-foot plant in Kings Mountain, North Carolina. In 2016, it purchased Midwest Ducts, Prairie Farm, Wisconsin. In 2017, Lukjan bought a 190,000-square-foot warehouse in Sidney, Nebraska. A year later, the company purchased the assets of an equipment manufacturer in Indiana and moved those machines to Nebraska.
VARIETY IS THE SPICE
When a company like Lukjan makes so many differently shaped products—round, oval, square and rectangular pipes, elbows and angles, triangles, boxes, saddles, sleeves, pans and boots—it needs a lot of specialized cutting, bending, folding and similar metalforming equipment. When such a company must also manufacture its goods at high volume, slitting wide coils to tight tolerance widths is vital.
Lukjan has a longtime relationship with Iowa Precision, which specializes in automated HVAC coil lines and duct fabrication systems, among other machines. Lukjan has duct lines, slitters and collar machines from Iowa Precision. In fact, all four locations use Iowa Precision equipment.
Lukjan also has a long-term relationship with Lane Steel Co., a service center based in McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania. Lane Steel supplies coils and performs slitting for Lukjan.
Tim Greer is director of operations at Lukjan. Although he had long lived in Conneaut, he says he didn’t know the company existed until he was hired about 35 years ago to work on the shop floor. He later became a supervisor, plant manager and now operations head. “It’s a great company to work for,” says Greer.
Sheet metal is slit from coil, cut and then shaped into a wide variety of parts for HVAC applications.
HIGH VOLUME
During fourth quarter 2024, Lukjan installed a new Iowa slitter at Conneaut. TJ Greer, head of maintenance and son of Tim, says the line processes material up to 60 inches wide. “We can run up to 14 gauge but we don’t do anything heavier than 20 gauge.” Although it started up at the end of January, within two weeks, “this slitter runs 15 to 20 hours a day,” five days a week.
“It runs all the time at 150 inches a minute,” he continues. “The old machine ran at 110 inches a minute. That’s a big productivity improvement”—processing steel 36.4 percent faster, to be exact.
“That was one of the biggest reasons to purchase the new slitter,” Tim Greer says. “We replaced an older Iowa Precision line, which we moved to our North Carolina plant.” When Lukjan approached Iowa Precision about the replacement, the supplier had something ready to go. “This line almost is off the shelf.” Lukjan gave Iowa its specifications, “and they told us, ‘It’s Line X. It will do whatever you want.’”
TJ Greer notes that the programming for the new slitter “is all different; it is very user friendly. Other key features were the door to change the slitter blade. We don’t have to use a crane to lift the blade out anymore.” Those changeouts “used to be an all-day process and now can be done in an hour. That is a lot of time saved,” further improving productivity.
The ease of use is so advanced, Tim Greer says, that “you could put this in with an operator who had never seen a slitter before.”
Another upgrade is the addition of a longer lift table, which “makes working with 10-foot-long material much easier.” However, the new line fit into the exact same footprint as the older unit, so no extra prep work, such as foundations or creating a looping pit, was needed within the shop space.
The steel moves from the slitter to a pipe maker or duct maker, or is cut with a laser machine, or is transported to a bender or folder. “There are many ways we can use the material. We do sheet metal origami,” Tim Greer says.
Lukjan has long relied on Iowa Precision slitting and duct fabrication equipment.
INSTALLATION
The lead time on the new slitter was 14 months. “We get it 90 percent installed ourselves and then technicians from Iowa Precision come in and do final hookups. They also teach our operators any new tricks,” he says. Operator training takes about five days.
Since starting up, “we have had zero issues and have not had to change anything. You turn it on and it works,” Tim Greer says.
He notes that the slitter achieves a tolerance of 0.02 of an inch at 150 inches per minute. “That is amazing accuracy for the speed. On this machine, it’s about the productivity of our current process being able to keep up with faster equipment we have downstream. This includes several laser cutting systems. We had been outsourcing flat sheet and now we will process those in house.”
Lukjan Metal Products employs 175 people in Ohio, 125 in North Carolina and 50 people each in Wisconsin and Nebraska.
“We are growing, bringing customers on and hiring daily at our facilities,” Tim Greer says. “We sell through big wholesale distributors all the HVAC suppliers. Demand for these products is growing.”
Iowa Precision, http://mestekmachinery.com/brand/iowa-precision
Lukjan Metal Products, 440/381-8244, http://lukjan.com/
