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Over the past 75 years, advancements in the miniature fluid control industry have helped give rise to innovative products and manufacturing processes that continue transforming our lives today. Advancements in the industry have made these fluid control systems easier to use, safer, and more accessible to the average consumer. And as the industry evolved, so too did The Lee Company.
Our innovative products have set the standard for modern fluid control technology. We trace our unwavering commitment to quality and superior performance to the first Lee product, the Lee Plug®. Created by Leighton Lee II, the Lee Plug was developed in direct response to a customer problem as a revolutionary sealing solution for leakage in aircraft hydraulic systems. Today, the Lee Plug remains the best-seller for The Lee Company, with well over 200 million plugs having been used on aircraft, missiles, spacecraft, and other sophisticated hydraulic systems.
As a systems designer himself, Mr. Lee possessed a keen understanding of the unique challenges typically faced by an engineer. He saw the potential for designs to be significantly improved if engineers had access to a reliable partner who could provide tested, proven products engineered to control fluid flow reliably and deliver expert guidance to solve their most complex design problems, saving them time and money. By founding The Lee Company in 1948, Mr. Lee became that partner and transformed the miniature fluid control industry.
We now offer thousands of parts that enable our customers to create products that propel technology forward in industries such as aerospace and defense, automotive, diagnostics, industrial and off-highway, medical equipment, scientific instruments, motorsports, oil and gas, and power generation. As we celebrate our 75th anniversary, we reflect on our past, present, and future with help from our industry-leading experts.
We asked several experts at The Lee Company about noteworthy industry innovations over the last 75 years. While the highlights mentioned below span across industries, within each reply exists a common throughline: in response to customer demands, fluid control systems have become smaller, more reliable, and increasingly complex.
Take, for instance, the servo-actuator. In aerospace applications, a servo-actuator can be used to precisely maneuver major flight controls to regulate the release of hydraulic fluid better. Once reserved for use in only the most critical hydraulic systems due to its high cost, this technology can now be found even in secondary and tertiary flight systems previously relegated to more rudimentary hydraulics such as bang-bang actuators.
According to Dave DiPietro, Product Manager and Project Specialist at The Lee Company, another notable industry advancement can be traced to the gradual use of higher-pressure hydraulic systems in commercial aircraft. Components were needed to accommodate pressures previously limited to military aircraft that could withstand various fluids and pressures. The fluid control products developed directly from this need helped to produce safer, better-designed planes.
In the health and science field, advancements in microfluidics or “lab-on-a-chip” technology have allowed scientists to control tiny volumes of fluid down to the nanoliter level (or smaller, in some cases). The commercialization of this technology has enabled a healthcare revolution, speeding up the time to diagnose disease, increasing test capacity, and bringing healthcare closer to the patient via wearable, portable technology.
In the automotive industry, modern consumers can access safety features and enhanced functionality made possible through miniature fluid control. Features like anti-lock braking systems, stability, traction control, and active vehicle suspension control are now industry standards. In the industrial space, powered exoskeletons can be used in various applications as extensions of the human body to reduce fatigue or amplify strength or range of motion. Handheld, battery-powered hydraulic tools used for cutting and crimping are now easily moveable from site to site. Additional tools may be accessed remotely, allowing the user to control the tool safely.
The early success of the Lee Plug became the foundation for a full product line of flight-critical microhydraulic components for the aerospace industry. The Lee Company’s product offering expanded to include flow restrictors, check valves, relief valves, solenoid valves, plugs, and safety screens in response to the needs of our aerospace and hydraulic customers. Many of the products pioneered in our company’s early years have become the industry standard and are still used 75 years later. Today, these products support critical hydraulic and pneumatic applications on aircraft, spacecraft, missiles, power generation equipment, and high-performance racing vehicles.
When reflecting on exciting technological advancements at The Lee Company, Jeff Dickey, Executive Vice President, Hydraulics, credited our commitment to continuous improvement and overall customer focus as enduring symbols of our legacy:
“In the late eighties, our hydraulic handbook included a bevy of innovative products, but we didn’t necessarily make every miniature hydraulic product that our customers could possibly need,” says Dickey. “A push was made from the late eighties to the early nineties to increase development project output to make the handbook thicker and fill in gaps in our product lines. The thought was we need to make as many hydraulic components as possible to become a “one-stop-shop” for our customers.”
Through these exercises, we discovered additional needs in the market that we could help address (such as shuttle valves, solenoid valves, and logic valves, among others). Lee components developed as a result of this process allowed us to diversify our product base further to better meet our customers’ evolving needs. Our commitment to product development is continuous, helping us better serve our customers by fully understanding their current and future needs. As of today, our parts have been everywhere: from the depths of the ocean to the stellar heights of outer space, from hospitals and laboratories to racetracks and highways.
For Steve Plumley, Manager of Inside Sales Operations, and Ralph Buck, Product Manager, the introduction of the stepper motor-driven pump represents an important chapter in The Lee Company’s history. Replacing the bulky and unreliable syringe pumps of the past, the stepper motor-driven pump changed the face of medical dispense pumps. This new device was a fraction of the size, moveable, and infinitely more reliable. In addition, stepper motor-driven pumps did not need to be mounted on the front of a medical device to account for periodic maintenance and repair. Steve added instead of replacing pieces every six months, “customers could say, ‘This pump might outlast the life of the instrument!’”
Similarly, multiple surveyed experts called out the introduction of High Density Interface (HDI®) solenoid valve products for the medical market and Very High Speed (VHS®) solenoid valves used in medical equipment and commercial printing as significant events in The Lee Company’s history. A unique addition to the market and notable for their precision dispensing power, VHS valves feature chemically inert materials and ideal drop-on-demand performance. Compact and lightweight, the HDI is an optimal solution for applications where many valves must be designed into the smallest space possible, enabling designers to meet critical system-level performance requirements without compromising.
Another notable product in our evolution is the piezoelectric micropump. These pumps deliver unrivaled pneumatic performance and enable innovation wherever precision control of small volumes is critical. “This technology is disruptive, miniature, silent, infinitely controllable, and pulsation-free,” says Sarah Charette, Technical Marketing Manager, Health and Science. With applications spanning the medical, scientific, and industrial sectors, introducing this product line allowed us to integrate our products further.
According to Sarah, the possibilities are endless: these pumps “can be used with our HDI pneumatic control valves in microfluidics to further aid in the miniaturization of portable diagnostics or with our VHS valves to dispense precision nanoliter droplets,” assisting in the development of new drugs, at home testing kits, and other printing applications. These pumps can even be utilized in portable wearable devices like prosthetics, blood pressure monitors, and compression therapy, untethering patients from the wall at home or in the hospital.
For Gregg Shanley, Technical Marketing Manager, Automotive and Industrial, Lee products that work within hydraulic systems to remove trapped air – such as our Air Bleed Orifice and vent valves – exemplify innovation in the automotive and industrial space. Trapped air causes slower reaction times in hydraulic systems, and traditionally drilled holes may result in significant hydraulic loss. These novel products dramatically improve traditional methods, allowing gas to be purged out of systems more easily.
The vent valve opens as system pressures increase, allowing trapped air to escape before closing as operating pressures resume to prevent further hydraulic loss. The Air Bleed Orifice contains a small precision flow orifice with an integral safety screen for contamination protection. This orifice allows trapped air to escape back to the sump and is small enough to restrict most hydraulic fluid from passing.
Expanding our range, we also began supplying piloting solenoid valves that reduce size and weight for aerospace, oil and gas, and motorsports applications. The Lee MultiSeal® radically simplifies port layout of these valves, providing reduced machining costs and superior reliability over traditional sealing methods. These products continue to differentiate us and are radical in terms of the performance, size, reliability, and efficiency they bring to the applications they are used for.
In motorsports, our custom-engineered, lightweight, and durable products are used in applications helping to control a wide range of fluid control systems in high-speed vehicles, including drag reduction systems (DRS), steering, braking, fuel control, and more. FIA has even homologated Lee solenoid valves for various Formula 1 racing applications.
In the oil and gas industry, our components assist in all stages of oil extraction and can be found in subsea equipment. Based on field-proven designs, our parts are built from corrosion-resistant materials. They are rugged enough to handle these environments’ extremely high temperature, pressure, and vibration requirements. In the energy space, Lee HI-BAR® safety screen filters are used to reduce contamination in combustion air management and lubrication systems, helping to increase the reliability and efficiency of industrial gas turbines. These durable, versatile filters are a novel solution in both liquid and pneumatic systems. They are some of the highest-strength screens available in the world today for last-chance protection against rogue contamination.
In addition to the notable product advancements mentioned above, our experts also highlighted innovations in manufacturing and machining technology within The Lee Company. We invest significantly in the technology used to fabricate, assemble, and test our parts. This has allowed us to adapt to new trends and introduce increased automation, such as collaborative robots (or cobots), into certain processes to continue maximizing efficiency to meet the demands of customers who rely on our products for their mission-critical applications.
When asked to reflect on The Lee Company’s legacy and impact on the miniature fluid control industry over the last 75 years, our experts centered around four major themes:
As technology advances, consumers demand reliable, innovative solutions to their toughest fluid control problems. In the future, The Lee Company will continue to develop cutting-edge products that help our customers advance their progress, just as we have since 1948.
So, what will the industry look like 75 years from now? As Ralph Buck put it, “If you follow applications long enough, science fiction becomes science fact.” Our surveyed experts predict an increased focus on miniaturization in the future, along with the electrification of certain hydraulic systems, increased pneumatic applications, cleaner fuel sources, and a move towards even more personalized and portable healthcare.
Miniaturizing components and systems can help drive further efficiency and improve performance while reducing weight and increasing value to the customer. For example, miniaturized components can help designers add new capabilities and redundancies to existing packages when retrofitting fleet aircraft.
If you follow applications long enough, science fiction becomes science fact.
-Ralph Buck, Product Manager
According to our experts, factors such as weight, heat, and cost affect the likelihood that a hydraulic system can or will become “electrified” or hybrid. The pace of this change has been slower, especially in those industries where strict compliance with safety regulations is required. Backup hydraulic redundancies are still needed to ensure that critical components (such as an aircraft’s landing gear, rudder, or wing flaps) continue functioning even with a sudden loss of electric power. Nevertheless, the increased use of electrical actuators and electric pumps used to generate or supplement hydraulic pressure represents a fascinating advancement to the future of fluid control.
Mat French, Technical Marketing Manager, Aerospace and Energy, predicts an increase in pneumatic applications in the space market, along with a “move towards hydrogen and clean fuel sources in commercial aerospace.” Similarly, increasing “urban mobility” may require travel vehicles (such as cars, planes, and helicopters) to become more energy-efficient, price-conscious, and environmentally friendly.
In the healthcare space, our experts called out a future of personalized and increasingly portable healthcare, along with improved, more accurate time to market for drug therapies. As new medical devices are developed, products must continuously meet high precision and low volume requirements. To be competitive in the market, companies must keep up with technology trends and continually differentiate their offerings from those of the competition – whether by increasing the safety and reliability of their products, increasing value to the customer, or developing other features that measurably benefit the end consumer.
The Lee Company is proud to play an integral part in the fluid control industry as we develop pioneering products to accomplish the toughest tasks and redefine miniature fluidics by integrating advanced technology into smaller packages for our customers. We look forward to supporting these exciting industry advancements and more during our next 75 years of innovation in miniature.
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