A Legacy of Innovation
We are experts in hazardous material handling products, offering reliable protection and customized solutions for every application need.
For 75 years, CRL has been a trusted supplier of remote handling solutions. Our innovative technologies provide safe and reliable protection for operators working with hazardous and sterile materials in Nuclear and Life Science applications around the world. We offer high quality products and exceptional technical expertise and support.
Our History
In the fall of 1945, Central Research Laboratories Inc. (CRL), was founded by three graduates of MIT, Frank G. Chesley, Demetrius Jelatis and Gordon M. Lee. The company initially designed radar testing equipment used by the U.S. military. During the Atomic Era, CRL pioneered early development of safer methods of handling hazardous and toxic materials produced by the nuclear industry.
With a legacy of 75 years of innovative experience, CRL has continued to develop and build a full line of remote handling and containment solutions including Telemanipulators, Transfer Systems, Glove Ports, and Waste Drum Transfer Systems. These products allow operators to safely and efficiently perform various tasks in Nuclear and Life Science industries across the world.
Our Expertise
The CRL team has the experience, expertise, and technologies to help with all your remote handling needs and strives to continually improve and develop innovative technology that help its customers achieve the highest level of performance. CRL is committed to its customers’ needs and developing the best solutions for every project. Every product manufactured is created with those specific needs in mind to deliver the most customized solution available for every application.
Applications Support
Our Applications Support team consists of highly skilled engineers with extensive product knowledge. They are responsible for designing the most optimal, cost-effective solutions for your application needs. We build on our decades of experience manufacturing top quality remote handling products and customizing them to meet your needs. Working with CRL ensures your product is right for you, right from the start.
New Product Development
New product development doesn’t just consist of new designs and innovative technology. We start each project by engaging with customers to truly understand their needs. This process helps us determine pain points, needs, and functionality for new products. This is where we embark on our path to create, revise and refine the most efficient solutions for our customers. It is here we strive to engineer the best new products to add to our diverse portfolio of remote handling technology while utilizing our industry experience and expertise. We take pride in working with our customers to develop the most beneficial technology available in the industry.
Sales Support
Our Sales Support team consists of highly trained remote handling experts with global reach and presence. They act as customer and manufacturing liaisons and build strong relationships with our customers. They do this in many ways including: Educating our customers on isolation technology, delivering high value solutions, and ensuring ongoing support.
Project Management
Project Management is provided to assist throughout the development and production process. Our Project Managers serve as gate keepers supporting our engineering and production departments while being your point of contact to fulfill all requirements of the project. This is accomplished through effective collaboration across all departments, coordinating all appropriate resources and activities and assuring optimal solutions are delivered. From start to finish, Project Management is there to ensure your project is taken care of every step of the way.
Quality
Our Quality Department provides oversight and inspection on all our products throughout the production process. By acting as the voice of the customer we are able to effectively provide a feedback loop to ensure continuous improvement and accuracy of the products we manufacture on a daily basis. Our established Quality Management System is designed and maintained to ensure reliable and consistent products are always delivered to our customers. We are dedicated to ensuring our production quality is consistently up to the highest standards possible. Only qualified suppliers are sourced to provide you with top quality materials for every product. CRL’s Quality Assurance Management program is compliant to the ASME standard entitled Quality Assurance Requirements for Nuclear Facility Applications (ASME NQA-1 2008/2009a) and ISO 9001:2015.
Technical Support
CRL offers maintenance and installation support for all your remote handling products. Plans vary based on your facility size and support needs. Our skilled technicians are available for onsite repairs or phone support. We strive to keep your products running smoothly with yearly preventative maintenance as well as emergency service calls for when unexpected repairs are immediately needed.
Production
CRL’s Production Department consists of four main areas; Booting, Machining, Assembly, and Inspection. It’s here we manufacture top quality remote handling products used in more than 22 countries across the world. Our Booting Department produces high quality boots to protect users and equipment from hazards and contamination. All boots are individually manufactured for shape and length. Every part is precision machined to specifications utilizing the capabilities of our highly skilled machinists and state-of-the-art production equipment to create the individual components used to build our final product. Each product is then meticulously crafted by our skilled assembly technicians, bringing up to 4,500 individual components together to create the final assembly. Our Quality Inspectors review every manufactured part to ensure reliable and consistent high-quality products are always delivered to our customers.
Cleanroom
Our ISO Class 7 Cleanroom, and Class 5 specific space, is used for the assembly of parts that require specified environments to prevent particulates from contaminating these parts. This ensures that these parts arrive to our customers meeting their required standards for final use. CRL’s ISO Class 7 Cleanroom operations are also compliant to ISO 14644 1:2015 Cleanrooms and Associated Controlled Environments.
Are you interested in being part of our team?
We offer a wide range of career opportunities and are always looking for top talent to join our team as we continue to build our Legacy of Innovation. Check out our Careers page for available opportunities.
Our Corporate Overview
CRL operates as part of Destaco
Destaco is a global leader in the design and manufacture of high-performance automation, workholding and remotehandling solutions. The company serves customers in a variety of end-markets, including the automotive, life science, consumer packaged goods, aerospace, industrial and nuclear sectors. Built on a legacy of more than 100 years, Destaco offers a comprehensive portfolio of products designed to engineer precise movement, placement and control solutions that drive productivity and uptime for manufacturers around the world. The Destaco family of products consists of industry-leading brands such as Destaco Manual Clamps, Power Clamps, and End Effectors; CAMCO™ and Ferguson™ Indexers; Robohand™ Grippers; and CRL™ Remote Handling Solutions. Destaco is based in Auburn Hills, Michigan, U.S.A. The company has more than 800 employees with 13 locations, in 9 countries, across the Americas, Europe and Asia.
More information is available at destaco.com