Our Story

For over 30 years, I have specialized in providing owners, manufacturers, plant managers, facilities managers and maintenance personnel actionable solutions for vacuum and heat transfer issues across a wide variety of industries.

Consistently from industry to industry, my clients expressed their frustration and concern about how to increase worker safety while reducing facility down time and decreasing expenses associated with removing heavy access covers for routine maintenance and emergency repairs. As you know, plugging a tube in a heat exchanger or condenser only requires a short amount of time. It is the process of safely removing and then replacing the heads in order to access the tube that takes many hours and in some cases days to complete.

The inspiration for Universal Hinge Bolt –On Hinge™ was born from years of being on site as mechanics and facility workers struggled to “drop the heads."  No matter what the industry or the size of the equipment the most concerning, dangerous, stressful part of the job was making sure that the access cover was safely rigged so it would not swing, fall or hurt anyone.  

What kept me up at night was why no one had figured out how to help “that guy who had to wrestle with getting the heavy heads off the equipment.” 

Quite simply, why wasn’t there a safe, cost effective, reliable solution for existing equipment in the field? One that would always fully support very heavy access covers safely while being as easy to use as opening a door. Despite everyone saying it could not be done it was my deep concern for the safety of the mechanics and workers that led to my relentless drive to come up with a solution.

Drawing on my experience, many designs, updates and improvements later, countless hours of engineering, calculations, prototypes, testing, revisions, safety and weight testing, the final design emerge to become Universal Hinge Bolt-On Hinge™. 

We understood then, as we do today, to never lose sight of our mission: At Universal Hinge Corp® our mission is to maximize workplace safety for everyone who works on any equipment with an access cover bolted to a mating flange.

Our patented Bolt-On Hinge™ is currently in service in a wide range of applications. It can be found on equipment in many industries from skyscrapers to pressure vessels, in tanks farms, exchangers, and equipment in refineries, chemical, petro-chemical, power plants and more.

Ed

Ed DePietro

Founder, CEO

For Safety Sake Use our Bolt-On Hinge™