Behind the Build at SAF Drives

Jason Eidt started at SAF Drives in 1994, testing and repairing circuit boards, drives, and electronic components. A few years later, he moved into service, where he spent roughly 25 years supporting customers, starting up systems, troubleshooting equipment, and helping keep industrial operations running.

Today, his role spans product sales, service, support, and training. In his words, he does “a bit of everything.” That range gives him a practical view of what SAF’s 50 years really represent.

It is not just experience. It is applied experience.

In Jason’s early years, much of SAF’s work was tied to steel. The team supported systems across the full production path, from coal, coke and iron ore handling to EAFs and blast furnaces; from BOFs and LMFs to casters, hot strip mills, cold rolling mills, picking lines, sitting lines, polishing and embossing lines, cut-to-length lines, roll forming and tube mills. If a system went down, service meant getting to site. Sometimes that meant dropping everything, packing a bag, booking a flight, finding a rental car, and heading out as fast as possible.

Today, support looks different. Remote access, better connectivity, and faster diagnostics mean some problems can be addressed from a laptop instead of after a day of travel. Jason has even supported customers from the back of his truck with a laptop and phone connection.

The tools have changed. The urgency has not.

Downtime still costs money. Obsolete equipment still creates risk. Customers still need systems that work reliably in demanding environments. And they still need people who understand the equipment well enough to help quickly when something goes wrong.

For Jason, engineered reliability starts before a system ever ships. It is the testing, checking, planning, and “what could go wrong?” thinking that happens before commissioning. It is building the system so the customer is not constantly calling for help. It is also giving plant teams the tools to troubleshoot faster on their own, through diagnostics, screens, flow diagrams, fault visibility, and redundancy where it matters.

That philosophy fits where industry is headed.

Customers are dealing with tighter margins, fewer skilled operators, more automation, more safety requirements, and aging equipment that has often been pushed far beyond its expected life. Jason sees those pressures increasing the need for support, but also the need for smarter, more maintainable systems.

That is where SAF’s 50-year track record becomes relevant. Customers are not just hiring someone who knows how to program. They are working with people who understand how the equipment runs, how the process works, and what it takes to do the job right.

Jason knows SAF will keep building on that foundation: 24/7 support, customer commitment, knowledge transfer to the next generation, and a willingness to keep up with technology without losing the hard-earned process knowledge that made SAF trusted in the first place.

Because the future of heavy industry will not be built on throwaway systems. It will be built on systems designed to run, supported by people who know what is at stake.