About Us

QTRCO, Inc. - Where Innovative Designs Deliver Superior Performance!
QTRCO, Inc. was founded in 1997 by Ed Holtgraver, an experienced valve industry engineer and former executive of multiple major valve and actuator companies. Ed set out to design and build the highest efficiency, most reliable, safest and easiest to maintain ¼ turn actuator on the market. After 2 years of intensive product and supplier development work, he achieved his objective with the introduction of the patented Rack & Gear™ actuator in June of 1998. At this time Magnus Palmstierna, the founder of PMV Positioners, became an investor and partner in QTRCO. With inventory on hand, Ed hired Shawn Hughes, a Mechanical Engineering and MBA graduate, from a major valve company to help him spread the word of his new product.

Over 25,000 actuators and 13 years later, it is obvious that they were right. The Rack & Gear™ actuator delivered all that was promised and then some. Capable of operating speeds faster than 100 milliseconds and cycle life in excess of 10 million cycles with minimal or no maintenance, our Rack & Gear™ actuator is revolutionizing the industry. Captured inboard springs and on-the-valve repair capabilities make it the safest and easiest to maintain actuator on the market today. This saves our customers time, labor and equipment costs which translate into reduced process down time, reduced loss of revenue and lower life cycle costs.

But we didn’t stop there… In 2007 we decided that the concepts that made our smaller (<15,000 in-lb) ¼ turn actuators so successful could be applied to larger (>15,000 in-lb) actuators. Our innovative Flat Yoke™ actuator was introduced to the market in mid-2009 and has seen tremendous success. Available in sizes from 15,000 in-lbs to 2.2 million in-lbs, QTRCO has once again revolutionized the ¼ turn pneumatic actuator market. The Flat Yoke™ actuator provides all the cost and torque advantages of a scotch yoke style actuator without any of the problems. The weight and force balanced design of the Flat Yoke™ actuator eliminates the side loads, friction loads and numerous parts inherent in traditional scotch yoke designs. This simplified design has less parts to wear out and is designed to outlast any traditional scotch yoke actuator, even at extremely fast cycle speeds (<200 milliseconds). It’s balanced weight makes it easy to handle during installation and it has the same “on-the-valve” maintenance characteristics as the Rack & Gear™ actuator to reduce process down time due to maintenance.

QTRCO actuators are available in Ductile Iron and Stainless Steel materials of construction and can be configured for low or high temp, low supply pressure, partial stroke valve exercising (QTRCO Xrciser™), and many other options.

At QTRCO, we use our innovative designs to produce actuators that deliver superior performance.  In short…QTRCO Actuators Deliver UPtime!!