ABOUT
Quality people, running a quality process
A Canadian additive manufacturer in Kingsville, Ontario, founded in 2026 by an automotive quality engineer.
Brian Yates
Founder and Director
25 years of making sure parts are right
Brian Yates has spent 25 years in automotive and heavy-truck quality at Ford, Lear, International Truck and ConMet, in production, materials and supplier quality engineering. That means PPAP submissions, IATF 16949 audits, 8D problem solving, control plans and measurement system studies: the work that decides whether a part is accepted or sent back.
He is an IATF 16949 and ISO lead auditor, trained in the AIAG core tools.
Black Spruce exists because printed parts are now good enough for real duty, but most of them ship without the evidence a buyer in automotive, aerospace, defence or agriculture expects. We close that gap: the same measurement, traceability and documentation discipline, applied to additive manufacturing, from a Canadian supplier.
THE NAME AND THE MARK
Built, not grown
The black spruce is a Canadian tree that grows strong in hard ground. Our mark builds it from stacked layers, like a printed part, standing on a datum line: the reference every measurement starts from.
- The base line is our people. Everything stands on them.
- The trunk is our core values. Partly hidden, it runs through every layer and holds it together.
- The three tiers are Engineered, Printed, Proven. Each one is built on the one below.
How we work
True today
We only claim what is true now. No certification, registration or capability is listed until it is real.
Measured, not assumed
A part is right when the measurements say so, recorded against the drawing.
Local and direct
You deal with the person who makes and checks your part, a short drive from Kingsville and Leamington.