COURTLAND, N.Y. — When Johanna Ames, president of Ames Linen Service, needed more ironing capacity to accommodate growth here at her fourth-generation, family-operated laundry, she compared the latest technology in large-diameter flatwork ironers to rebuilt American flatwork ironers and chose the rebuilt ironers—three of them, in fact.
The ironers were originally manufactured nearly 50 years ago by American Laundry Machinery Inc. and remanufactured by Tingue.
“I was not convinced that I could put out finished table linens at the quality level I desired from a big roll ironer,” says Ames. “I looked at other ironers but they just couldn’t beat the finish quality of these Americans.”
Ames Linen Service processes 200,000 pounds of linens per week, including 100,000 pounds of food and beverage linens.
To achieve this level of finish quality, the aging ironers are remanufactured in a painstaking process aimed at restoring the ironer to OEM specifications.
The process includes dismantling the ironer piece by piece, inspecting and cleaning each part, repairing or machining new parts as needed and adding from a menu of modern upgrades, if desired. When put back together, the rebuilt flatwork ironer performs as specified for many years at a fraction of the cost of other flatwork ironers.
“They tore down the ironer, rigged it to my plant, cleaned it and completed a total rebuild right on site over a three-day weekend,” says Ames. “Now, you can barely hear the ironer run, its finish quality is impeccable, and I don’t worry about downtime.”
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