Precision CNC machine shop in Hillsborough, New Jersey. We machine parts to your drawings — production runs, small batches or a single piece — and we repair and reverse-engineer when that is what the job needs.
Precision CNC machine shop in Hillsborough, New Jersey. Parts machined to your drawings — production runs, small batches or one-offs — plus repair and reverse engineering.
Zala Machine Co. was started in 2002 by Stanley Zala, a master machinist who had spent his career at Davis-Standard building plastic and rubber processing systems. He opened the shop to support local customers, and it grew a capability at a time — honing, gun-drilling, large machining, grinding, fabrication, then 5-axis mill-turn work on the Mori Seiki NTX2000. His son Martin runs it now. Gabriel, the third generation, has been in the shop since he was old enough to help. Seventeen people, thirty production machines, and around three hundred years of machining between them.
Most of what we do is build to print: machining parts to an OEM’s drawings for new machines, in production runs, small batches or a single piece. Shafts, housings, rolls, gear blanks, flanges, cylinders, extrusion tooling and weldments, from mild steel through stainless and 4140 to Inconel and titanium. Alongside that we repair — gearboxes stripped and line bored, worn components brought back to size, obsolete parts measured off the broken one and made new. We turn to 60″ diameter and 170″ long, mill to 157″ and lift to 10 tons. Parts ship across the United States, Canada and Mexico, and plenty still get dropped off and collected by hand.
The biggest job on this page is the grooved cable drum for a shipyard crane, further down. It is the outside edge of what fits here — which is why a pump shaft or a bearing housing is never the hard job.
Most jobs arrive as a print or a STEP file and leave as a finished part. Production runs, small batches and one-offs, for OEMs building new machines and for the plants running them. No two weeks look the same here — a month can run from a single replacement shaft for a municipal pump to a batch of housings for a machine builder.
Drive shafts, thrust shafts, pump and mixer shafts and line shafts — splined, stepped, keyed or hollow-bore. We turn to 32″ diameter on CNC, up to 83″ long on the long-bed lathe, and 43″ diameter × 170″ long on the manual lathes. Shaft grinding is done here rather than sent out.
Cable drums, roller shafts, idlers, sleeves and covered rolls. Long work runs between centres; larger diameters go on the vertical lathe, up to 10 tons on the floor.
Bearing housings, pump bodies, gearbox cases, manifold blocks and cylinder bodies. Line boring to 20″ diameter across a 50″ span is in house, so a worn housing can be brought back to size instead of replaced.
Gear blanks bored, keyed and journalled, plus sprockets, couplings, spacers and hubs. We machine the blank here and our gear-cutting partner cuts the teeth — the schedule for the whole job stays with us.
Flanges, adapters, bushings, glands, wear rings and breaker plates. These are usually the small parts holding up a rebuild, so they get quoted the same way a big job does.
Spiral mandrels to around 20″, die lips and die sections to 50″, feed screws, and flight re-cutting and straightening. Hard surfacing goes out to a vendor and we re-machine it to size here.
Machine frames, structural weldments, shafts with welded flanges and stainless tube. Most of what we weld gets machined afterwards — flats, bores and holes — so both halves of the job happen under one roof.
Bring us the broken one. We measure the part itself, work out what it has to do, and make a new one — no drawing needed, and no waiting on an OEM that stopped supporting it years ago.
Three questions on the first call. The answers usually tell us on the spot whether the job fits our machines and roughly how quickly we can get to it. If it does not fit here, we will say so and point you at a shop it does fit.
Up to 10 tons on the floor. Milling to 157″. Turning to 83″ long. Line boring to 20″ diameter.
Full capacity list further down. Outside it, we will say so.
Bearings and seals — 1 to 2 weeks
Full gearbox rebuild — 4 to 8 weeks
General machining — often far quicker
Breakdowns — same-day review
Thirty production machines in Hillsborough. Turning to 32″ diameter by 60″ long on CNC, or 14″ diameter by 83″ long on the long-bed lathe, and on the manual lathes to 60″ diameter and 170″ between centres. Milling to 157″. Bore honing to 26″ diameter by 156″ deep. Gun-drilling to 4″ diameter by 96″ deep. Lifting to 10 tons.
Repair is one of the things we do rather than the whole of it — but when a line is down it is the only thing that matters. We start at seven. Tell us what failed and your project gets reviewed the same day. If the component is obsolete, or the drawing went missing two owners ago, we measure the broken one and make a new one from it.
7:00am to 5:30pm, Monday to Friday.
Saturdays by arrangement.
sales@zalamachine.com
You get someone in the shop who can walk out to a machine and look at it, not a call centre.
The broken part, or clear photographs of it from a few angles. What machine it came out of, whether the line is down now or still running, and how fast you need it back. A print or a STEP file helps if you have one — but plenty of jobs here have started from a photograph and a phone call.
The Little Egg Harbor water department drove to us with a broken stainless steel pump shaft. We measured it, cut the replacement and had them back on the road in two hours, with their driver waiting in the office. Not every job goes that way, but that is what the shop can do when the part is straightforward and the material is on the shelf.
The latest jobs to leave the shop — what the part was and what made it hard. We add to this as work ships.
Grooved cable drum for a shipyard crane, turned, grooved and bored on the large lathe. On a part that size the groove has to stay true over the full length or the rope stacks — that is the whole job.
Replacement stainless steel pump shaft for a township water department, machined in two hours while their driver waited. They arrived with the broken one and left with the new one the same afternoon.
Twin-screw extruder gearbox opened for inspection, the helical gear stack lifted out, the output bearing bore repaired in house and the gear train reassembled and re-timed. It went back to the plant rebuilt rather than replaced.
20″ diameter spiral mandrel with sixteen ports, cut from 4140HT. Every port and land has to match across the mandrel or the film runs thick on one side.
Worth a look before you write the email. If your part sits outside this, send it anyway — we will tell you straight whether it is ours or point you somewhere better.
| CNC turning | 32″ diameter × 60″ long — Okuma LB4000EX |
| CNC turning, long work | 14″ diameter × 83″ long — Doosan Puma 300XLY, our longest |
| Vertical turning | 60″ diameter — two Giddings & Lewis vertical turret lathes |
| Large horizontal turning | 43″ diameter × 170″ long — Poreba lathe |
| Milling | to 157″ — Zayer |
| 5-axis mill-turn | Mori Seiki NTX2000 |
| Bore honing | to 26″ diameter × 156″ long |
| Gun-drilling | to 4″ diameter × 96″ deep |
| Line boring | to 20″ diameter across a 50″ span, in house |
| Lifting | to 10 tons |
| Blown film | lips and die sections to 50″ diameter; spiral mandrels to about 20″ |
| Materials | through Inconel and titanium |
| Measurement | Keyence portable CMM, profilometer, full manual gauging |
Yes, and that is most of what we do. Send the print or the STEP file with quantities and we will come back with a price and a lead time. Repeat work is welcome; we hold the setup.
Yes. Plenty of what leaves here is a quantity of one, and there is no minimum order.
Whatever the print calls for. Held on the machine and verified on a Keyence portable CMM, with a profilometer for surface finish and full manual gauging. If a tolerance is beyond us we will say so before you send the job, not after.
Bring us the broken one. We measure the part itself, work out what it has to do, and make a new one — no drawing needed, and no waiting on an OEM that stopped supporting it years ago.
It depends on the part and the material — simple turned parts have gone out the same day. Your project gets reviewed the same day it arrives and you will get an honest date, not a placeholder.
We machine the gear blank here — bore, keyways and journals — and our gear-cutting partner cuts the teeth. We hold the schedule for the whole job.
Hillsborough, New Jersey, in Somerset County. Parts go out across the United States, Canada and Mexico.
ITAR registered. Family run since 2002, three generations on the floor, in Hillsborough, New Jersey.
Send the drawing or the STEP file and we machine it, measure it and ship it. Production runs, small batches, and the one-off jobs other shops turn down because they cannot make the setup pay.
Most repair shops order the part and wait. When a component is obsolete, or the OEM quotes six months, we make the replacement instead of chasing it — because the machines to make it are already on our floor.
The people who quote your job are the people who cut it. Seventeen machinists, thirty production machines and around three hundred years of experience between them, with all three generations still on the floor.
If something we machined, fitted or replaced fails inside a year, bring it back and we will make it right. It covers our workmanship and the parts we supply.
Spiral mandrels to 20″, die lips and sections to 50″, breaker plates, adapters, feed screws, flight re-cutting and straightening, and full gearbox rebuilds for single and twin-screw lines. Hard surfacing goes out to a vendor and we re-machine it to size here.
Stanley Zala was a master machinist at Davis-Standard, a global builder of plastic and rubber processing systems, before he founded this shop. He learned extrusion equipment from the inside — the tolerances that matter in a feed section, and how melt actually behaves in the metal. That is why the extrusion work runs deep here, and it is not something a competitor can put on a brand page.
