Brochure
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Northern Industrial Manufacturing is one of the world’s foremost manufacturers of premium made-in-USA automotive differential shims, spacers and precision thrust washers. We are proud suppliers to the automotive OE, aftermarket and heavy-duty industries, and honored recipients of the GM Supplier Quality Excellence Award every year since 2013.
Our vertically integrated parts manufacturing facility, and state-of-the-art engineering, research and design operations, are located in the Metro Detroit area – the epicenter of the North American automotive manufacturing industry. We can supply parts for any type of automotive differentials, including industrial and commercial applications.
By embracing today’s most advanced and innovative parts manufacturing processes we offer greater efficiency and higher machining productivity – enabling us to offer the highest quality automotive differential part manufacturing, at the lowest costs, with the shortest lead times.
In the automotive industry, the front axle of an automobile is a component that holds together the front wheels of the automobile and carries the weight of the front half of the automobile. The front axle consists of the differential gear sets (pinion gear and ring gear) placed into the axle housing, which is connected to two drive axles. These two drive axles are connected to two wheel hubs. Its differential pinion gear is connected to the transmission through a drive shaft and its wheel hubs are connected to one of the front wheels.
There are several places in the front axle that requires the support of high quality precision metal shims. One of these places is the wheel hubs which are connected to the axles, so they’ll need to have the gaps between them filled by precision shims to prevent the wheel hubs from rattling around.
Precision shims are also used for the differential section of the front axle. This section consists of two gears enmeshed in a differential casing, the pinion gear driving the ring gear which is attached to the front axle. The ring gear could grind against the casing due to friction, so precision metal shims would be needed to not only reduce the friction between these two parts, but the shims will also ensure that both differential gears are fully enmeshed.
Our precision shims keeping the differential gears enmeshed to reduce friction, is as important to an automobile as the front axle is for driving the front wheels forward, and handling the weight of the automobile or heavy duty truck.
Northern Manufacturing works with automotive customers like General Motors, Daimler, and ZF on a daily basis ensuring they have the correct inventory needed to keep their assembly lines running. We also ensure that our shims are of the highest quality, with reduced lead times.
With ethics and integrity at our core, we are the automotive industry’s go to manufacturer and global supplier of precision automotive differential parts, thrust washers and spacers, selective shims, and other metal stamping and grinding solutions. And our ability to often offer delivery windows below 2 weeks far exceeds industry averages – for the highest quality automotive parts, at the lowest costs, with the shortest lead times.
While our competitors traditionally have 20 week lead times, in many cases we are able to offer delivery windows below 2 weeks. With a goal of being the automotive industry’s “go to” source for high quality automotive differential parts manufacturing, we would love to provide you a competitive quote.
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