Founded in 1951 by Mr. Warren Shwayder, a summa cum laude graduate of the University of Michigan Engineering School, the United States Naval Officer Training School at Annapolis and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Mechanical and Chemical Engineering, The Shwayder Company has long specialized in creating patented ultra-hard, ultra-tough materials for many applications. The company is currently run by Warren’s son, Mark Shwayder, an honor’s graduate of Harvard University.

Surfacite Helicopter Skid Shoes were designed to combat the problem of extreme wear on the skid shoes and skid tubes of US Military Helicopters, particularly during pilot training exercises at Fort Rucker, Alabama, the Home of US Army Aviation. Mr. Shwayder and Mr. Bob Brauer, Fort Rucker’s Chief Aeronautical Engineer, worked together over two years (1980-1982) to develop what has become the most widely used ultra-hardsurface Skid Shoe in the world.

After intense testing during thousands of landings by Army Aviators at Fort Rucker, Surfacite Skid Shoes were adopted by the US Army and Army National Guard as the solution to it’s skid shoe problems. Surfacite Shoes were designated a “Critical Application Item” by the Dept. of Defense and installed throughout Ft. Rucker’s fleet of TH-55, TH-67, OH-58, UH-1 and AH-1 helicopters.

In subsequent years, Surfacite Skid Shoes were installed on US Air Force and US Army National Guard helicopters nationwide. They are also used by the militaries of many other nations, including Australia, Spain, Israel, Turkey, Pakistan and nations throughout Central and South America.

Surfacite Shoes outlast OEM Skid Shoes by tremendous margins (approximately 100 to 1), lasting for months instead of hours in training environments where extreme wear is a severe and expensive problem.

For the last 30 years. Surfacite Skid Shoes have been jointly manufactured by The Shwayder Company and Brauer Aerospace Products, founded by Mr. Bob Brauer’s son, Michael Brauer. Brauer Aerospace Products has world-class expertise in laser-cutting, plasma-cutting, computer controlled metal-forming, welding, painting and military-grade packaging. This multi-decade partnership between Mike Brauer and Mark Shwayder guarantees you superb products that fit perfectly and perform as promised every time.

MaxAlloy Drill-Proof Security Plates for bank vault doors, manufactured since 1951, are installed in hundreds of thousands of vaults and commercial safes worldwide. MaxAlloy is used in High-security US Government safes and filing cabinets for top-secret documents in government facilities and embassies around the world. Nuclear weapons stored onboard US Navy aircraft carriers are protected in maximum-security vaults behind doors equipped with MaxAlloy Security Plates. Bank-Vault style entry doors to U.S. Air Force ICBM missile silos are equipped with MaxAlloy Plates.

MaxAlloy Snowplow Shoes and Snowplow Wear Bars are made for all brands of snowplows. MaxAlloy Snowplow Shoes and Wear Bars will extend the life of your plow blades ten fold, greatly reducing costs for replacement blades and slashing wasted downtime for blade replacements during snow storms.  MaxAlloy Snowplow Shoes are used in many situations where removing snow in critical time frames is imperative, such as at major airports (JFK and Laguardia Airports, for example) and in the City of Chicago, where failure to clear the snow in record times can cost a Mayor his job.

MaxAlloy Wear Bars are used in many industrial situations where severe wear occurs, such as in glass factories or taconite ore mines, where very abrasive materials are being moved at high speed in steel chutes. MaxAlloy Bars and Plates can be made to any size or shape, they can be curved and twisted to conform to the shape of underlying steel parts. They are easily welded in place using ordinary welding equipment. Using MaxAlloy you can put far more tungsten carbide on any surface than can ever be done with hardfacing rods.