Founded in 1942 as designers and manufactuerers of special machines and automated (robotic) handling systems, Sterling's plant in Royal Oak, MI featuares a production floor of 40,000 square feet with three 25 ton cranes (30 feet under the hook). The company's main areas of expertise are automated materials handling, automated or semi-automated assembly of components, automated gauging, sorting, and weighting of parts. Besides the die casting, injection molding, forging, and heat treat industries, Sterling has designed special system as diverse as machines to manufacture "Nerf" balls to the feed mount assemblies for radio telescopes.