Making the World Go Round
Carlos Raya setting up one of BDL’s two new
Femco HL-25 lathes. Nick Winters is passing through. The HL-25
features maximum turning length of 23.62” and maximum turning
diameter of 9.84” Distance between centers is 25.59”. Spindle speed
4800 rpm, driven by a 20-hp direct drive.
How a Young Entrepreneur Built a Highly Successful
Business 
Building Pulleys and Belt Drives for Industry.
Story and photos by C. H. Bush, editor
Scientists believe the wheel was invented about 8,000 years ago in ancient Sumer (aka Sumeria). The earliest depiction of a wheel in use was of a potters wheel discovered on the side of a 3,500-year-old clay pot unearthed in what once was known as Mesopotania. No one yet knows who first invented the wheel, but one thing about it is certain. The wheel totally changed human civilization.
Since those early days, the wheel has spawned a huge number of industries, ranging from the manufacture of the early potter’s wheel, to wheels for war chariots, to cogs in watches and machines, to bicycles, to trains, to all the millions of other uses in modern society. In short, wheels are what make the world go round, and companies that specialize in making wheels for industry play key roles in our world.
One such company is Orange, CA’s Belt Drive Ltd. (BDL). Founded in 1990 by its president Steven Yetzke, the company produces a broad variety of belt drive systems for a wide rage of markets.
“Basically, if a product needs a pulley and a belt to make it go, we’re interested,” says Yetzke. “We produce belt drives and accessories for telescopes, treadmills and off-road vehicles. We produce timing pulleys for import cars, and we manufacture fuel rails, ball bearing clutch kits, park lock and cutting brakes, shifter boxes, hand controls, filter relocation kits and throttle bodies. A major market for our business is the Harley aftermarket primary and secondary belt drives. Altogether we design and manufacture thousands of different part numbers.”
Learning the Business
Yetzke began working for his father in 1966 at age 11 when his father bought a screw-machine business.
“The machines were pre-CNC,” he says, “all Brown & Sharpe machines. Of course, I swept floors like everyone else there, but I learned to run machines, too. I loved to work back then and I still do. By the time I was 18 I became foreman at a company my dad bought, called Pacific Broach. That company had screw machines and broaching machines and produced a gear line. Also, Pacific Broach was licensed to cut pulleys for Uniroyal, which is what introduced me to that field. I still own that company.”
Nick Winters, left, gm, automotive products, and and Steve Yetzke, discuss the day’s production requirements.
A True Entrepreneur
Perhaps because of his early start and watching his father buy businesses, Yetzke had an entrepreneuring spirit right from the beginning.
“I learned long ago that, if you want to compete, you have to control the means of production,” he says. “You only depend on others when it makes financial sense to do so.”
That attitude has lead Yetzke to buy businesses and add in-house capability anytime he felt it helped him control quality and cost. The result is that he now operates from 5 buildings with a total of 65-70,000 sq ft of space. Between Pacific Broach and Belt Drives Ltd., he employs about 50 people, most of them in production.
“Over the years I’ve bought quite a number of companies in order to bring their capabilities in house,” he says. “Early on I bought an aluminum foundry, and then I worked out a deal with the president of ITT to buy their rubber division. I moved their rubber producing equipment and their employees from Costa Mesa to Anaheim. Many of them are still with us today.”
In 2007 Yetzke bought a company called GMA, which produced high-quality braking products for the Harley Davidson v-twin aftermarket. His most recent acquisition was Jamar Performance Products, which produces brakes, pedal assemblies and steering products for drag, sand and off-road communities.
“Our goal at BDL is pretty simple,” Yetzke says. “We want to provide our customers with the best high-performance aftermarket products and accessories possible. To do this, we’ve designed our facilities to do just about everything we need to produce and control that quality. We operate our own aluminum foundry, more than 50 CNC mills and lathes. We have a gear cutting department and a rubber manufacturing facility. We operate state-of-the art CAD/CAM software and have a rapid prototyping system for checking our designs. Plus, we own a handful of Harleys to make sure everything we produce works the way it’s supposed to. We don’t leave anything to chance.”
Equipment, Equipment, Equipment
With thousands of parts to produce to feed his customers, Yetzke has not been reluctant to buy the equipment he needs.
“On the manual side, we still operate our original Acme multi-spindle screw machine,” he says. “Those machines are really fast for long runs. We also have Fellows gear shapers and Barber Colman gear hobbers for making gears and plain shafts. We have injection compression presses for our rubber belts and other parts. On the CNC side, we have about 28 Femco CNC lathes, some with live tooling, and another 22 CNC mills, both vertical and horizontals. We keep the turning and milling operations separated in two different buildings. We found that
View of BDL’s turning department. The company operates 25 Femco CNC turning machines, running one shift a day to produce thousands of parts. worked out best for us.”
Why Yetzke Chose Femco
When it comes to turning, Yetzke says he has been sold on the Femco machines for a long time.
“I bought my first Femco in the early ‘90s,” he says. “Most of our work back then was turning, and we were farming it out to a friend’s shop. Problem was the shop was about to go bankrupt, and I saying to myself, ‘What am I going to do now? I have to do something.’ The answer was I would have to buy some CNCs. So, I asked my friends, ‘What should I buy?’ They said, ‘Well, we’re running Femcos. We like them because they do a good job and they’re local. We get good service from them. If you have a problem, they’re right here.’ So, I contacted Femco and bought a used machine from them. It came with software called Orocad, which was a Macintosh-based CAD/CAM package. I didn’t know much about CNC at the time, so I went to school to learn Orocad and then I spent two days at Femco to learn how to do offsets and other things. We’ve been a Femco shop every since.”
Yetzke says he likes the machines for a number of reason, too, but primary among them is the price/performance ratio.
“We’re a self-financed business,” he says. “I buy a lot of equipment, so I have to shop carefully to get maximum return on my dollar. The Femco machines give me high quality parts at a reasonable price. We run them hard, and so far they’ve been very reliable. And, as my friend said, if you do need help, they’re here to help fast.”
Newest Lathes
Yetzke’s latest purchase was two Femco HL-25s.
Yetzke: “I just bought two brand-new Femco HL-25’s. They’re both workhorses with 8” diameter chucks. My other heavy duty workhorse is an older Femco WNCL30 lathe, which they don’t make anymore. That’s a shame, because that machine has been perfect for us. We also have an HL-35 turning center, which is a big machine.”
Yetzke says BDL produces a lot of different parts on the HL-25 machines.
“We run a lot of aluminum through here, and we use the HL-25’s to make one of my ITT Jasco parts, a complete vortex pump that pumps 350 gallons a minute. It’s used on Caterpillar tractors. We run a 17-4 shaft on the 25s, and we hold .0005” all day long. They’re good machines.”
View of the BDL mill
department, which contains about 22 CNC milling machines.
Future Plans
Yetzke seems to love to buy new businesses and incorporate them under the BDL umbrella, so the question is: what is his next move?
“I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing now,” he says. “To be honest, it’s fun doing different things in business. I love making different parts, and I really like going places and seeing things I’ve made on bikes or cars.
Frankly, I don’t think I’ll ever retire. For me working is just too much fun to give it up.”
