The passion in Sal Gaccione's voice is rising, as it often does when Italians speak of the finer things in life, such as opera or wine or great works of art.
"Look at the attention to detail," Gaccione says, pointing to a photograph. "Everything has been individually wrapped and sealed by hand. You just don't see that kind of craftsmanship much anymore."
At first glance, the object that Gaccione is describing could indeed be mistaken for a large piece of fine Italian pastry or ribbon candy, with a light blue swirl delicately intertwined among a series of brilliantly white folds.
But all of the white in the photo is not fancy Italian cream, it's from tape in tightly wrapped coils. And the blue swirl is insulating paper. The photo shows the work that has been done to complete a customized winding on a 450-hp motor to the exacting specifications of an arm of the United States military. It's just one of many similar jobs that routinely come through Atlantic-Kenmark Electric, Inc., the electrical service shop that Sal Gaccione has owned and operated here for 25 years, the last 22 in partnership with his two brothers, Frank and Vincent.

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In the shadow of the Meadowlands sports complex, three brothers have teamed up to earn a big-league reputation with the U.S. military and other demanding customers NORTH ARLINGTON, N.J.-

The passion in Sal Gaccione's voice is rising, as it often does when Italians speak of the finer things in life, such as opera or wine or great works of art.
"Look at the attention to detail," Gaccione says, pointing to a photograph. "Everything has been individually wrapped and sealed by hand. You just don't see that kind of craftsmanship much anymore."
At first glance, the object that Gaccione is describing could indeed be mistaken for a large piece of fine Italian pastry or ribbon candy, with a light blue swirl delicately intertwined among a series of brilliantly white folds.
But all of the white in the photo is not fancy Italian cream, it's from tape in tightly wrapped coils. And the blue swirl is insulating paper. The photo shows the work that has been done to complete a customized winding on a 450-hp motor to the exacting specifications of an arm of the United States military. It's just one of many similar jobs that routinely come through Atlantic-Kenmark Electric, Inc., the electrical service shop that Sal Gaccione has owned and operated here for 25 years, the last 22 in partnership with his two brothers, Frank and Vincent.

In the shadow of champions
North Arlington is located just south of the New Jersey Turnpike exit for East Rutherford, N.J., on the "Jersey" side of the George Washington bridge that spans the Hudson River from New York City. East Rutherford is also the home of the Meadowlands sports complex where pro football's New York Giants, pro basketball's New Jersey Nets, and pro hockey's current Stanley Cup champions, the New Jersey Devils, are all based.
Like many people and companies in this part of northern New Jersey ("Meadowlands" is a misleading term for an industrial landscape set into brown marshlands), and like those major-league teams, which have all earned championships through a hard-working, blue-collar approach to their sports, Atlantic-Kenmark has made a name for itself as a shop that can be counted on to do tough, demanding jobs in challenging conditions.
In particular, Atlantic-Kenmark has become well-known for developing what Sal Gaccione feels is a unique approach to specialized windings for customer-specified military applications. On many of these jobs, the windings are taped and sealed by hand, iron to iron. "We're the only company on the East Coast, and maybe anywhere, that can offer the combination of experience and craftsmanship needed to do these jobs the way the Navy wants them done," Sal Gaccione says.
"From far away, these [specialized windings] might just look like nice, uniform form coils that anybody might think they could wind," Gaccione continues. "But when you're doing this work for the military, they not only demand that it looks good, it has to perform flawlessly in the worst conditions. These windings get tested in severe conditions for many hours, at a specified minimum level of megohms. There can't be any bare coil, everything has to be symmetrical, and there can't be any collapsing-whatever tension you have in the front, you have to have at the end."

The "Stine Stator"
Atlantic-Kenmark's expertise and skill in handling these exacting jobs wasn't developed overnight. But when given the initial opportunity to perform such work, it appears that the Gaccione brothers may have had an inherent advantage over others, because of what they could trace back through their Italian heritage to some 500 or so years ago.
"After we were given the opportunity to first work on one of these jobs, a senior engineer who had written the standards for the military application was sent to our shop to do an inspection," Sal Gaccione relates. "After he started looking at what we did, he loved our work, and we passed with flying colors. 'You guys are like Michaelangelo,' the inspector said. 'You are artists with these windings!'"
As with all great art, though, the results that Atlantic-Kenmark has been able to produce for its demanding customers have come only after years of tireless practice and determined searches for the most effective and proven techniques.
"Developing our approach to these specialized windings has really been a process of trial and error," Sal Gaccione reports. "We have experimented a great deal to find the right type and size of wire to use, and we've also developed a special tool to help us properly shape each coil individually."
Through many years of working on these projects, the Gacciones feel they have developed a unique, hybrid process that captures both the economies of mush windings and the uniformity of form coils, even for jobs that go beyond 600 hp, which is generally considered to be the top end of the workable range for mush windings.
For example, while leading a tour of jobs currently in his shop, Sal Gaccione points out a winding for an 800-hp motor used to power an air conditioning unit in a military application.
The winding will require a total of 620 lbs. of copper wire, Gaccione says. "It's very tight," he stresses, just in case the shop visitor needs help doing the math.

Survival tactics
Sal Gaccione's passion for finding unique solutions to imposing challenges was perhaps best shown in 1978, when Atlantic-Kenmark reached an operating crossroads and almost closed its doors. After graduating with honors from a technical institute in Acri, Cosenza, in southern Italy, Gaccione immigrated to New Jersey in 1970. With the help of his brother Vincent, who had proceeded him to America and was working for an electrical service shop in East Rutherford, Sal eventually landed a shop-floor position with what was then known as Atlantic Electric. Gaccione stayed with the company as it merged with a Newark shop to become Atlantic-Kenmark, and was promoted to shop foreman in 1976.
By 1978, however, the shop's business volume had deteriorated to the point where a closing was imminent. "[The previous owners] offered me the opportunity to purchase the company, and I decided to take a chance," Sal Gaccione recalls. "I loved doing this kind of work, and didn't know how else I would be able to be sure I could continue to do it."
What Gaccione didn't know, however, was how taxing-literally-running an American business could be. "For the first six months, all I did was try to get all of the paperwork done," he says. "If I'd known what I was getting into from that aspect, I really don't know if I would have wanted to buy the business."
Sal Gaccione quickly realized, however, that he had no choice but to apply the same determination to the management side of the business that he'd used for each shop-floor challenge. And eventually-with a big boost from its early "artistic" successes on military-related projects-Atlantic-Kenmark's revenue line began to turn again in an upward direction.

Bringing in the brothers
After bringing in Vincent, trained as a machinist, and Frank, a direct-current specialist, as business partners in 1981, Atlantic-Kenmark was now set up to pursue a wider range of service jobs. From the start of their partnership, in fact, the brothers' approach has always been to be as open-minded as possible.
"We never turn work away, no matter how difficult the challenge," says Sal Gaccione. "If we have to, we'll just start by taking something completely apart, and then reverse-engineer it, to find out how to get it working again.
"One big advantage we think we have that allows us to do that is that all three of us are still very much involved with the physical work ourselves," Sal Gaccione adds about himself and his brothers. "We are always trying to develop our workers and teach them new skills, but we know that we cannot always ask them to stay late and do everything.
"So [my brothers and I] have always agreed that we won't get ourselves in a position where we must rely solely on other workers; if we have to, we are prepared to do it ourselves," he says. "That's the best way to keep developing new techniques that we can then teach to our workers. It's also the best way to always have a full and up-to-date understanding of the problems that our customers are facing when trying to operate this type of equipment in very severe conditions."

A special combination
Walking through the tight but tidy Atlantic-Kenmark shop, a wide variety of jobs are in evidence, showing how the Gaccione brothers have successfully combined their specialization in windings for the military with the open-minded approach to general electromechanical repair work that is critical to any service company's survival in today's electrical aftermarket.

On the military side, Sal Gaccione points out and describes repair jobs that have involved some well-recognized names from U.S. military history. With a steady stream of these kinds of jobs coming into the shop, Gaccione says, "We can always see the latest technology first-hand, and that helps us keep our competitive advantage [in the military-related market]." As in the non-military world, the general trend that Atlantic-Kenmark has noticed in its military-related work through the years has been a significant downsizing of the power-generation equipment used on many vessels and vehicles. "Some of the motors that we're seeing are only about one-sixth of the size they used to be, even though the application is the same." Gaccione says. "The new technology is amazing in how it can make incredibly efficient use of smaller-horsepower motors."

Non-military buildup
While Atlantic-Kenmark has grown to rely on military-related work for as much as 60% of its total repair volume-and the recent conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq only promise to increase the need for fleet repairs and rehabs-Sal Gaccione is determined to continue developing the non-military side of his business as well. "We never want to have too many eggs in one basket," he says.
The New York metropolitan area remains a rich source of work to repair the equipment needed to power the plastics, paper, and chemical plants of northern New Jersey, as well as for pump and elevator motor repair work for office buildings and institutions in New York, Newark, and other large municipalities in the area.
"We've expanded out into about a 200-mile radius and now do work in Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and New York state," says Sal Gaccione. "We'll do on-site winding service up to about 100 miles away. But most of our work is from within 50 miles of the shop. We've never had a salesperson; pretty much everything comes to us word-of-mouth. Eventually we may have to take a more organized or formal approach to sales and marketing, but for now, we just basically answer the phone and we'll take whatever we can fit in the door."
The Gacciones' passion for finding a better way has also helped it to develop a specialty niche in welding and soldering equipment and techniques. For armatures, Atlantic-Kenmark uses an automatic soldering machine that Sal Gaccionc says is "the only one in the U.S. that I know of." The machine allows the armature to be mounted on an angle and slowly rotated, so that commutators can be soldered with "nice uniformity and penetration," Gaccione says.
Atlantic-Kenmark has also branched out to serve as a marketing and distributing arm for an Italian manufacturer of a gas generator for welding and brazing that produces only the gas it consumes, thereby reducing safety concerns while greatly improving gas economies.
The company also touts specialties such as: stud welding machine repair; in-house and on-site repair of armatures and windings for gearless elevator motors; overhauls of pumps, eddy current drives, compressors, vari-drives, and diesel generator sets; and complete machining services, including metal spraying and rebabbitting.
Through neat and efficient use of storage racks and boxes throughout their shop, the Gacciones are also able to stock a surprisingly large variety and volume, for a 10,000-square-foot facility, of replacement motors (fractional to 200 hp), as well as a full selection of brushes and brush holders, bearings, insulating materials, and an extensive inventory of all shapes and sizes of copper wire.
By being quick to strike whenever the opportunity to distinguish their company through product and service specialties has presented itself, while at the same time carefully cultivating and preserving Atlantic-Kenmark's strong reputation for quality and reliability in the more "routine" aspects of electro-mechanical service, the Gaccione brothers have revived the company from a shop that was on the brink of closing, to one that has grown its revenues more than five-fold since 1979. And they are confident that, even in tough economic times that have forced other New York-area shops similar to theirs to cease operations, they've struck the right balance between steady and specialty work, and can continue to plan for steady growth in the years ahead.