Clarklake Machine

09/05/2025

It is with profound sadness that we share the news of Bill Galbraith’s passing. Bill bravely fought the battle of colorectal cancer for several years. We grieve not only for the loss of an exceptional individual, but also for the pain his family must endure.
Bill worked here at Clarklake Machine, Inc. for some 39 years. He was a good employee and a great friend.
When we were young men, we were on the CMI bowling team and the softball team and for a short time he would give me a ride, in his Jeep, to and from work. I still remember the time we had come across a woodchuck with its head stuck in a discarded can and we were able to rescue that poor thing.
Here is his obituary link.
https://www.vickersfuneralhomes.com/obituaries/William-James-Galbraith?obId=44738804
Thank you for taking the time to read this sad announcement.

Matt DeKarske, VP/CEO of Clarklake Machine, Inc.
Please pray for his family as I am sure it must be a difficult time.

View William James Galbraith's obituary, contribute to their memorial, see their funeral service details, and more.

05/07/2025

We have a customer that contacted us amost 6 years ago in need of a tool disk.
They purchased one of our CMI 40/20 Segmented Tool Disk at that time.
Well 2 days ago they contacted us to buy 2 segments.
With this tool disk being segmented, when something goes wrong you only need to change the damaged segment/s and not the entire tool disk saving you time and money.

This isn't how a tool umbrella is supposed to look...

04/11/2025

Could be the million dollar question on some game show.

In zero gravity, a candle's flame doesn’t dance the way it does on Earth — it turns into a small, perfect sphere... and glows blue 🔵🔥

Why? On Earth, flames stretch upward because of convection — hot air rises and pulls cooler oxygen in at the base, giving the flame its classic teardrop shape. But in microgravity, there’s no “up” — so no rising hot air.

Instead, oxygen diffuses slowly and evenly around the flame, and that creates a low-temperature burn. The flame becomes cooler, rounder, and blue, because there’s less soot and more efficient combustion.

So even fire behaves completely differently in space — calm, quiet, and spherical.
Science makes everything feel like magic. ✨🧪🚀

03/02/2025

02/14/2025

06/08/2023

The story of Clarklake Machine, Inc.

Clarklake Machine, Inc. was formed by Roy Saari and his two partners in 1966 as Saari Associates and was incorporated in 1973. The original location was on Airline Dr. in Jackson, Michigan.
In 1974 a new building was built at 9325 South Meridian Road and Saari Associates, Inc. moved in, three years later a 1,600 square foot addition was added to the building. In 1978 the property next door at 9451 South Meridian Rd. Clarklake, MI was purchased, and Saari Associates, Inc. moved. Still not big enough, a 2,400 square foot addition was added in 1979.

Henry, Mark, and Mike DeKarske became the proud owners of Saari Associates, Inc. in the summer of 1981. In 1995 Saari Associates, Inc. needed another addition. The building expanded south 5,000 square feet to its present size of 19,200 square feet of manufacturing space and 1,728 of office space. During that addition the old flat roof on the existing building was changed to a pitched roof to stop the leaks forever. In 1996 the name was changed to a more fitting name, Clarklake Machine, Inc. In 2000 Henry DeKarske retired leaving Mark and Mike DeKarske as equal partners. The front office area got a complete facelift the summer of 2003.
In late 2008 we had three machines down for the same reason, a broken tool disk and we had just changed one of them two weeks earlier, we had to do something different. Our Tooling Engineer looked at it and came up with the CMI Segmented Tool Disk for the Haas VF series machining center and started selling them on eBay in 2009 and are still selling them today.

In 2012 Mike DeKarske passed away leaving Mark his stocks. With Mark at the helm, we received our AS9100D Certification in early 2019 and needed to replace one of our lathes and he went with a Haas ST-30. In late 2019 Mark found out that he was ill. He knew he wanted to keep the company in the family, so he approached his brothers Matt and Martin (Joe) DeKarske, and we accepted the challenge. On October 6th of 2020 with Mark’s passing Matt and Joe DeKarske became equal partners.

Clarklake Machine, Inc. added two SVM4100 Doosan machining centers both with fourth axis late 2021 replacing some of the older machines.

Not only has the location, building size, name, and ownership changed, but our products have also changed. In the 60s and early 70s our main product was tool and die work with some production as fill in. We had a complete tool room and 6 try out presses. In the mid-70s we received our first production job. We were machining clutch housings on conventional machines. In 1979 we bought our first numerical controlled machining center. Today we are no longer manufacturing dies or have presses. However, what we do have are many up-to-date CNC machines, a Quality Management Department, and an Engineering Department with two seats of SolidWorks and various Cam programs to produce machine programs for the manufacturing of precision parts.

Vision and Mission Statement-
Clarklake Machine, Inc. is a growing and innovative precision parts manufacturer. We offer our customers superior quality parts at affordable prices. We will continue to expand our technology and knowledge of our customers` needs to assist them in cost reduction and improvement ideas.

09/11/2017

A child has two jobs. One is just being a child, the other is growing up to be an adult.

08/09/2017

Today one of our largest material suppliers provided a lunch for all of our employees and the employees next door to us, talk about customer appreciation!!!
They came in and set up canopies, tables with table clothes, chairs and a food line. The people from the supplier where sales reps, the president, owner's son and the owner himself, which was a complete surprise.
Everyone had a good time and bellies full we all had to back to work.

THANK YOU

04/11/2017

This is one of the most resent projects we worked on with a customer of Clarklake Machine, Inc.

The customer had a target price to meet and everything needed to be made from steel, to do so we needed to find a way to make the part using 12L14 as it is the least costly steel available. The trouble with this material it is not available in flat without going to a special extrusion and that would have made that material to costly. The solution was to manufacture the part from either hex or round stock. Because the round was the lower cost and we could make the part fit in a 2" round stock, it was the clear choice. By working with the customer we were able to meet their target price.

01/31/2017

One of our customers purchased a CMI Segmented Tool Disk and took this pichture before they installed it to show what it was replacing. As you can see it was in bad shape.