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Mattracks, Inc. - Karlstad, Minnesota

From a treacherous sea ice channel in the Canadian High Arctic to remote jungle outposts in South America, MATTRACKS® rubber track conversion systems make it possible to traverse the world's most unforgiving terrains and travel to far-flung places once inaccessible by vehicle.

Resembling a tank track crossed with a snowmobile track, MATTRACKS® replace tires to provide tank-like mobility over nearly any terrain, including mud, snow, sand, rock and marshy areas. The rugged systems are used around the world by a wide range of industries and individuals whose work or play requires travel far beyond the pavement's end, including construction, agriculture, utility, telecommunications, petroleum and mining companies, as well as military and civil defense agencies. Available in 35 models for ATVS and vehicles weighing up to 20,500 pounds GVW [9290 Kg], MATTRACKS and MATTRACKS LiteFoot® brand ATV conversions also are popular among recreation enthusiasts who equip ATVs and 4X4's with the tracks for the ultimate all-terrain vehicle.

Many people know of MATTRACKS from their high-profile use on Yellowstone National Park's snow coaches, the MATTRACKS-equipped pop machine from a recent 7UP® commercial, and the T1 robots from the movie "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machine." The unique product, manufactured by Mattracks, Inc., also has been featured on A&E Television's "Top 10 Picks Eccentric Automobiles - Cars that changed the Automobile Industry," Discovery Channel's "Monster Garage," the History Channel's "Tactical to Practical," and the Science Channel's "Techknowledge" show.

Mattracks, Inc. began in 1994 in remote Karlstad, Minn., a small town one hour north of Thief River Falls, very near the Canadian border. Founder Glen Brazier named the company in honor of his son Matt, who at age 11 handed his father a drawing of a truck with tracks instead of tires and asked him if they could build one.

In the nearly 20 years since young Matt Brazier sketched his drawing, MATTRACKS have been installed on vehicles in more than 55 countries on all seven continents. They have been used on fire trucks at Antarctica's frigid McMurdo Station and on natural gas exploration vehicles on Alaska's brutal North Slope tundra. Someday, a MATTRACKS-equipped vehicle might even explore the surface of Mars.

Martian MATTRACKS?

In 2003, researchers from the Mars Institute began testing the MATTRACKS-equipped MARS-1 Humvee on Devon Island in the Canadian High Arctic. The researchers are using MARS-1 as a roving field laboratory as they study the Mars-like terrain of Devon Island's Haughton Crater. They also plan to use MARS-1 to define some of the key requirements for future pressurized rovers for human exploration of the Moon and Mars. MATTRACKS are ideal for use in environmentally sensitive areas such as Haughton Crater since they reduce a vehicle's down pressure to only 1.5 psi. By contrast, a person standing exerts 6 to 8psi of down pressure and a standard pickup truck exerts about 40psi.

Just getting to Devon Island was an adventure.  With snowmobiles and Inuit sleds in tow, the MARS-1 crew started their journey with a 6-hour ride to the east coast of Cornwallis Island. They camped overnight, then forged across the icy 23-mile (37km) Wellington Channel which separates Cornwallis Island from Devon Island. It could not have been far from their minds that this treacherous area was the site of the worst disaster in the history of the British polar exploration  the Franklin Expedition, which claimed the loss of two vessels and all their crews in the 1840s.

The MARS-1 project and numerous other high-profile success stories have helped Mattracks become Karlstad's largest private employer. The company now has 40 employees and recently doubled its North American manufacturing area to 200,000 square feet with the purchase of a second plant in Karlstad. It also has expanded into China with the 2007 construction of a 500,000 square foot manufacturing facility in the Zhejiang Province. This year, the company introduced two new products: the motorized Black Diamond Powerboard and the Gladiator TUV, a "tracked utility vehicle," that resembles an UTV only it is equipped with MATTRACKS.

In-House Machining Ensures High Quality

Mattracks maintains its high quality standards by doing its machining in-house at its main Karlstad plant. The company has an impressive machine shop featuring a 4X8' High Rail Gantry abrasive waterjet system manufactured by Jet Edge of St. Michael, Minn.  The shop also is equipped with a laser system, two machining centers, a turning center with bar feeder and multiple rubber presses.

Plant Manager Jeremy Reese said the Jet Edge waterjet system has helped his company grow by enabling it to increase productivity, cut virtually any material and do work in-house that it otherwise would have to outsource. Mattracks cuts a wide variety of materials with its waterjet, including steel, aluminum, wood, fiberglass, foam, rubber and plastic. They have even etched glass. The thickest materials they cut are 5 1/2'" steel and 6" plastic.

Reese explained that the Jet Edge system is primarily used to cut mold and press blocks to length before they are machined and then used to mold the rubber tracks in a proprietary process. It also is used to cut heat-sensitive materials and materials that are too thick to cut with laser. Some of the Mattracks products cut with waterjet include skid plates, aluminum running boards for a multitude of trucks and ATVs, and 450 different mounting bracket kits for attaching the tracks to all sorts of makes and models of trucks and ATVs. Mattracks also cuts a variety of prototype parts for new products, including the main frame and skid plate for the Black Diamond Powerboard.

"We used to cut these parts with a plasma cutter by hand," Reese recalled, pointing to a steel skid plate that was being cut on the waterjet.  "Our production went up when we bought the Jet Edge. There's less secondary machining and less man hours.  I would say it is 50 percent faster to do on the waterjet."

Mattracks bought their Jet Edge system in 2000 and had it equipped with one abrasivejet cutting head and a 50-horsepower intensifier pump rated for 60,000psi (4,100 bar).

"We went with the Jet Edge because we liked its set up and the fact that it is Minnesota based," Reese explained. "If we need a tech up here, it's not even a day, and the training is pretty handy."

Reese noted that he has been very satisfied with his Jet Edge waterjet system.

"We like the versatility of the materials we can cut on it, and it's user friendly compared to the laser, plus it's able to go from wood to thick plate in a matter of minutes," he said. "It's also a piece of cake to load. I have no complaints. The training was good and the installation went well. We didn't need any return trips. I've never had any major trouble with the machine, and if the time comes, I would buy another Jet Edge."

More Information

For more information about Mattracks, call 218-436-7000, e-mail sales@mattracks.com or visit www.mattracks.com.

For more information about Jet Edge, call 1-800-JET-EDGE (538-3343), e-mail sales@jetedge.com or visit www.jetedge.com.


About Jet Edge
Established in 1984, Jet Edge is a global designer and manufacturer of ultra-high pressure waterjet systems for precision cutting, surface preparation and coating removal. Jet Edge systems are used around the world in a broad range of industries, from the world's leading airlines to automotive, aerospace, industrial manufacturers, machine and job shops. Jet Edge's customers include Ford, Toyota, General Motors, Boeing, American Airlines, and General Electric.

Advantages of Jet Edge Waterjets
Jet Edge waterjets offer many productivity and flexibility advantages over traditional cutting methods including:  no sharpening and no burrs requiring secondary finishing.  Waterjets completely eliminate heat-affected zones, toxic fumes, recast layers, work hardening, and thermal stress, and offer a hygienic method for cutting food.  Jet Edge waterjets can hold a positional accuracy of 0.005" with a repeatability of 0.002" over the entire work envelope. They have been known to cut titanium up to 15" thick.

Waterjets are environmentally friendly and produce no hazardous waste, reducing waste disposal costs.  They can cut off large pieces of reusable scrap material that might have been lost using traditional cutting methods, parts can be closely nested to maximize material use, and the waterjet saves material by creating very little kerf.  Equipped with an industrial-grade CNC control running Windows XP, the Jet Edge waterjet system allows for maximum productivity through the use of multiple heads, expandable overhead gantry designs and underwater cutting capability. Waterjets use very little water (a half gallon to approximately one gallon per minute depending on cutting head orifice size), and the water that is used can be recycled using a closed-loop system.  Waste water usually is clean enough to filter and dispose of down a drain.  The garnet abrasive is a non-toxic natural substance that can be recycled for repeated use.  Garnet usually can be disposed of in a landfill.