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Questions ? Call us at 905-624-5536 |
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Our beginnings. |
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Harold Hobday Roberts, circa 1936 in front of our first shop on Queen Street East near River St. A bench lathe, milling machine vise and other items in the window were almost the entire inventory. In those days a big month totalled nearly $10 in invoicing. (yes this is where the "H.H." originally came from |
| This is Harold Hobday Roberts, shown in the doorway of the first premises on Queen Street East, in Toronto, about 1936. We believe the business was formally started 3 to 4 years before this. Harold Harry Roberts, his son, was involved from day one and the two of them developed the business buying, rebuilding and selling used machinery. In 1954 Harry negotiated the purchase of a new building right in the heart of the Toronto machinery district, at King and Jarvis Streets. In 1964 the building next door was purchased and about 10 years later it became necessary to rent additional warehouse space.
Harold Harry Roberts and Brent Roberts in front of the King Street building the day we moved out
to the new location in Mississauga.
In the late 1960's Harry's son Brent and Bob Fish joined the company and have been together since. In the late 70's it was recognized that the time had come to move out of the downtown area and our current building was purchased in 1980. Backtracking a bit, the move to the new building on King Street in 1954 also brought new opportunities and we took on our first agencies for new machinery. One of the lines added in those days were the Grob toolroom bandsaws, which we still sell today. It's now over 55 years with Grob. A few years later Harry took on the representation of Roll-In Bandsaws. This style of machine was totally unknown in those days when most buyers came in looking for a hack saw and it's advantages quickly caught on. In the early 1960's one our neighbouring competitors had a local businessman build a knock-off. They had a difficult time marketing against the Roll-In and that lead the builder, Les Baxter to approach us on how to improve on the Roll-In and market it. That saw became known as the Verticut and we still sell them today ... Les Baxter's sons are now producing them. Nobody has an accurate count but we estimate we have sold a couple thousand over the last 40 years. During the 1960's and 70's we had long standing relationship with the Czech machine tool builder, TOS and sold large numbers of their machines. They continue to be popular today. The next major line we handled were the Leadwell CNC machines. John Wooley, Phil Mitton and Merlin Jenkins headed the startup, support and service team. In the late 1980's Leadwell was the top selling line in Canada. About 1991 John Kenna of Anilam paid us a visit, seeking new sales representation in Canada. We started slowly with their digital readout line and began retrofitting a few CNC kits to Supermax mills. That business grew quickly in the next few years as we swung from Supermax to Topwell as a mill supplier. Topwell cooperated very well with us to customize his machines for the Anilam CNC's. Around 1995 we started fitting the Anilam lathe controls to CNC ready frames built in Canada by Standard Modern. In 1996, the next significant step was taken at the Chicago IMTS exhibition, when Topwell people met us and, don't laugh, we designed the first Topwell bed mill built specifically for CNC, on napkins in a basement Chinese restaurant. That resulted in the TW-96, named for the year of its design. Hundreds of that model were sold, model name evolved to TW-32 and it continues to be our most popular model. Again, we don't have an accurate count but we are somewhere around 1,000 machines fitted in our shop with Anilam controls. |
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Our current location on Matheson Blvd, near the Toronto International Airport. |
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HH Roberts Machinery Limited : HH Roberts Machinery Manufacturing What's the difference? HH Roberts Machinery Limited is the older company, involved in Canadian sales and service of machines and accessories. HH Roberts Machinery Manufacturing, has a separate staff and corporate structure and is only involved in the integrating of Anilam CNC controls to CNC ready machine frames, mostly imported from Taiwan. It sells completed machines to dealers only, across Canada and the USA. There are also many machines out there with the nameplate of HH Roberts Machinery and Supplies. That company was formed to deal with used machinery under the old Federal Sales Tax scheme. |
