History

Stanley Herbert Muffett, founded the business of S.H. Muffett in 1920. Stanley Muffett started his career as an apprentice at Arnolds of East Peckham, Kent. After he had gained some experience, Stanley entered into a partnership with another engineer, Mr Moon. Together they built up a small business in car repairs at their premises in Newton Road, Tunbridge Wells. Unfortunately, after a short while there was apparently a falling out between Muffett and Moon, which lead to Moon departing from the business.

Following this, Stanley Muffett took a change of direction in his career and became involved in machining. One of Stanley’s earliest customers at this time was Mortley Sprague of Tonbridge, a company that was involved in the manufacturing of various devices for the Ministry of Defence.

Another early project was the manufacture of parts for the prototype hop picking machine, which was being developed by a Mr Harrison who demonstrated the machine at the Guinness farm near Sittingbourne. He was also involved in various civic duties and became Mayor of this borough for 2 years running.

Niche Market

Around 1950, Stanley Muffett realised that general machining was becoming a very competitive market and that, although there were many companies after the war who could undertake general machining, there were only a few that really understood how to produce gears.

Stanley Muffett had the foresight to see the potential of gears in the developing world and created a company that could specialise in this expertise. This foresight has enabled this organisation to succeed, prosper and grow into the Company that we are today; Muffett Engineering Solutions.
unfortunately, after a short while there was apparently a falling out between Muffett and Moon, which lead to Moon departing from the business.

Specialists in Gears

Stanley developed a high quality machine shop to supply the parts for his new gear cutting machines and the company gained a first class reputation as both gear manufacturers and sub-contract machinists.  Some of the parts they produced were used for early medical equipment, e.g. the Heart and Lung machine, whilst later assemblies were supplied to Airtech who produced military radio communication equipment.

The first class reputation that S.H. Muffett achieved then has enabled the company today to obtain business from a wide variety of customers in various industries.

If gears are to work correctly they need to be machined very accurately and to close tolerances.  To achieve this close tolerance, some parts have to be worked to within five microns.
The size of a single micron can be clearly seen on the slide, in which it is compared to a human hair.

This accuracy requires not only specialist machines to create the gear teeth but also high quality lathes, milling, boring, and grinding machines to produce blanks from raw materials.  The gears are then produced from these blanks. The parts which hold the gears together, i.e. gearbox cases, also require high precision machining.

Today

Today the largest part of our business is the manufacture and assembly of special gears, mechanisms and gearboxes that are made to suit our customer’s specific requirements.