In early 1995 Ken Dahm left his sales job with 20 years’ experience, a small list of customers, and a desire to carve out his own path in precision sheet metal fabrication. For a short time, he took on light assembly projects in his garage and brokered out larger projects to other sheet metal shops to keep his customers happy while he made his plans for the future.

During May of that year he received a phone call from a friend that a local sheet metal company had fallen on hard times and could be bought for pennies on the dollar. Seeing his opportunity present itself, Ken, and his wife Betty, put everything on the line and purchased that business – a 7,000 square foot space in Bensenville, IL with a few pieces of worn out machinery and a small office – and Ultratech was born. For a few weeks Ken began manufacturing parts by himself to get the company off the ground, and by year’s end Ultratech was a small crew of five employees.

1998 produced significant growth for the company, and Ultratech acquired the unit next-door to knock out the wall, which doubled the space to 14,000 square feet. Around that time the company started to acquire more modern machinery, hire on more employees, and expand its customer base to grow into a fully fledged manufacturing company.

Thanks to the hard work of that small crew, Ultratech continued to grow beyond the capacity of the original facility in Bensenville. In 2001, Ultratech found a new home in a modern, 43,000 square foot facility in Bloomingdale, IL, which allowed the company to continue expanding into the future and evolve its capabilities and offerings.

In 2023, having outgrown the 43,000 square foot space, Ultratech completed an addition to its existing facility, increasing the footprint to 81,000 square feet. This addition allowed the company to take another big step forward by bringing powder coating capability in-house, and adding lights-out automation capability to its cutting and punching processes. Heading into 2025 Ultratech looks to continue mapping out the new space to increase the efficiency of its existing processes, while continuing to add new capabilities like silk screening and laser welding.

30 years later Ultratech still maintains the same ambition Ken started with of providing customers with a reliable, competitively priced precision sheet metal fabrication service. It is continually expanding its workforce, adding more advanced equipment, and developing new systems to better serve customers, while at the same time maintaining its family-owned roots.