About Us

In 1947, Lewis Walker, Sr., founder of Roll Technology Corporation, joined Chromium Corporation of America in Waterbury, Connecticut, following a distinguished tour of duty commanding submarine chasers in the Pacific theater. At that time, Chromium Corporation was leading in the development of hard chromium plated surfaces for industrial applications in the United States. With a history that goes back to these early stages of electro-deposited chromium on roll surfaces, Mr. Walker relates to their first success of achieving .001" TIR and taper with a 16 Ra polished finish: "We called it a mirror finish and considered it to be as good as anyone was likely to need."

In the early 1950s, Mr. Walker became president of U.S. Metal Coatings, a small roll plating and finishing company in northern New Jersey. Taking it through two decades of expansion and growth, the company was sold in 1968. In 1971, Mr. Walker decided to build a new roll plating plant in the southeastern part of the country and founded Roll Technology at its present location in Greenville, South Carolina.

Lew Walker, III, the oldest son of Mr. Walker, joined his father in the family business after his own tour of duty with the U.S. Navy. Since that time, he has been intimately involved in Roll Technology's concerted effort to develop ever-improving services, processes, and procedures to better serve an ever expanding customer base. Lew became president in 1986, following his father's retirement.

During its 30 year history, Roll Technology has, indeed, grown:

• from 3 employees to over 40
• from 1 roll grinder to 12 high precision grinders, including Computer Numerical Control (CNC) capability
• from 2 hard chromium plating tanks to 7
• from 8,000 square feet to over 50,000 square feet of production space

Roll Technology serves customers worldwide, providing the highest available precision in roll accuracy and state-of-the-art optical mirror finishes. We have progressed from .001" TIR to .000025" (twenty five millionths) and from 16 Ra to less than 1/4 Ra in surface roughness. We are still working today to improve our processes.