Premier Lab Glass has been pulling glass in Toledo, Ohio since 2007. We've never franchised, never offshored, and never gotten bigger than the floor we can walk in five minutes. There's a reason for that.
Frank Czerwinski apprenticed under a third-generation scientific glassblower in Cleveland in the early 1980s, spent eighteen years on staff at a national-lab glass shop, and opened the doors of Premier Lab Glass in March 2007 with two lathes, a bench station, one apprentice, and a handshake order from a Big Ten chemistry department.
The first piece out the door was a 5L jacketed reactor with a five-port head. Frank still has the drawing on the wall above his lathe. The professor who placed that order is now retired; his successor still buys condensers from us.
Frank is now in his early sixties and still on the floor — mostly on the largest lathe, mostly on quartz work, almost always doing the drawing review on anything quoted over fifteen thousand dollars. The succession plan is internal. Three of our senior fabricators have ownership stakes; nobody is selling to private equity.
Easier to write down what we won't do than what we will. The list is short on purpose.
If a piece left our workshop, our name is on it because our hands made it. We do not import bulk glass and stick a Toledo address sticker on the carton. Multiple competitors do — we don't.
Inspection is performed in-house by a dedicated QC team that reports separately from production. We don't ship a piece because the lathe operator says it's good — we ship it because Quality says so.
Every meter of tubing on our floor is traceable to a supplier MTR. We refuse to use unknown-origin material, even on price-sensitive utility pieces. If we don't know what it is, it doesn't go on the lathe.
Improperly-annealed glass that "looks fine" is the #1 cause of pieces that crack or shatter weeks later. We anneal everything to a controlled cool-down profile and verify with a polariscope. No shortcuts on the most important step.
Year-by-year highlights.
| Year | Milestone |
|---|---|
| 2007 | Frank Czerwinski opens Premier Lab Glass in Toledo with two lathes and one apprentice. First order: 5 L jacketed reactor. |
| 2009 | Adds first Lehr annealing oven (Deltech DT-31). Begins offering Class A volumetric calibration with NIST-traceable bath. |
| 2011 | Headcount reaches six. Added third lathe. First pharmaceutical R&D customer. |
| 2013 | ISO 9001:2008 registered (later transitioned to 9001:2015 on schedule). Quality function formally separated from production. |
| 2015 | Acquired the adjacent 18,000 sq ft warehouse. Floor space doubles. Adds first pin-fired quartz torch. |
| 2016 | ASGS apprentice program launched on-site. Two apprentices per cohort, three-year curriculum. |
| 2017 | ITAR registered with U.S. State Dept DDTC. First defense-prime customer. |
| 2018 | Headcount reaches twelve. SAM.gov registration. Federal contracting begins. |
| 2019 | Second Lehr oven added (Thermolyne F48055). Combined annealing capacity reaches 3,200 L. |
| 2020 | Through the pandemic — operated continuously as essential supplier to academic and pharma research. No layoffs. |
| 2021 | Faro Quantum-S CMM added. 3D verification of complex assemblies and reactor systems begins. |
| 2022 | Catalog reaches 300+ standing SKUs. CNC retrofit on two lathes for production-run repeatability. |
| 2023 | USP <660> Type I container glass certification expanded. DSCSA pedigree program operational. |
| 2024 | Acquired by Premier Science LLC (employee-led ESOP-style structure). Frank remains principal glassblower; succession plan in place. |
| 2025 | 8,107 custom pieces shipped. Catalog at 412 SKUs. Reject rate 0.41% trailing-12-months — best year on record. |
| 2026 | Eighteen years in. Still pulling glass in Toledo. Same address. |
Scientific glassblowing is a trade learned at someone's elbow. We hire for that. We train for that. Our oldest employee started in 2007. Our youngest started last spring.
Hiring? We are — quietly. Drop a note to careers@premierlabglass.com if you've turned glass for a few years and want to talk.
Customers welcome. Two weeks notice, NDA on file, safety briefing on arrival.