Ray McMillian, a piping design engineer at CF Braun Company (a Alhambra Ca, Oil & Gas Refining and Production Engineering Company) started thinking about alternative piping/valving arrangements for the primary valve assemblies used as Root valves for direct and remote mounted Gauge Pressure and differential pressure instrumentation. These assemblies of heavy schedule carbon steel and high alloy pipe, with Class 2500 rated gate and globe valves, took up a lot of space and weight and significantly added to the total project cost.

Eventually Ray and a friend of his, who owned a local machine shop, explored some alternatives. They designed and redesigned some alternatives by machining valve and bonnet cavity ports into readily available 1-1/4" or 1-1/2" round and square, and 1-7/8" HEXagonal barstock. Using a horizontal lathe and vertical mills the final design incorporated all of the features of the multiple pipe nipple and valve traditional assemblies into a compact male NPT or SW inlet barstock valve with multiple female threaded outlets.

To my knowledge, they were the first commercially marketed barstock primary valves, and gained wide market acceptance in the oil and gas industry.

Eventually Hex Valve was sold to Circle Seal Corporation. It was not a good fit as Circle Seals primary business at the time was aircraft and Hydraulic valves and components. In 1983, Gilbert Richards, CEO of Richards Industries in Cincinnati, Ohio, purchased the Hex Valve Company, and made it part of Richards Industries.

Richards Industries is the parent company of three other distinct industrial product lines: Marwin Valve - ball valves and automated products; Jordan Valve - regulators, sanitary valves, and control valves; and Bestobell Steam Traps - steam traps and steam specialty equipment.

Richards Industries meets customer needs with a wide range of new and proven manufacturing technologies. Complete in-house CNC machining, painting, assembly and testing, along with material traceability and extensive quality procedures assures that Richards Industries products will exceed your expectation.