Our Story

Surefire Engineering was born out of a drive for innovation. An engineer preoccupied with developing solutions to his customers’ problems meets a software developer with a preoccupation for finding problems to solve…

Serendipidy or fate?

Founded on Innovation

A German engineer and an English web developer meet by chance in a French restaurant in South Korea. A very international affair.

As it turns out, Charles built the establishment’s oven, and Dan built their website. They immediately click, and they while away the next hour or two, eating, drinking, plotting and hatching. Could such a pair come together and combine their skills for the good of humanity – or, at least some tiny portion of it?

For some time, Charles had been on the lookout for a software developer who could help him build mobile applications to control his kilns and ovens remotely in an intuitive and user-friendly way. In the following weeks, their horizons broadened and their resolve deepened as their ideas snowballed. A business relationship became a business partnership.

Surefire Engineering was born out of a drive for innovation, and we have innovation in our DNA. It is our modus operandi, it is our raison d’être, it is our joie de vivre.

With a sturdy foundation in furnace engineering, Charles Bunch knows the industry. He knows what’s hot and what’s not. The former pleases us – the latter excites us.

Dan Luba has a passion for technology and for using it to solve problems. His drive to find ever more elegant solutions ensures that there is always a cherry on every Surefire cake.

Our Services

Surefire Engineering specializes in custom built, professional-grade furnaces, kilns, commercial ovens and sintering equipment, as well as bolt-on monitoring and safety equipment for plug-in convenience and peace of mind.

We cater primarily to professional artisans and craftspeople. With CEO and Chief Engineer, Charles, being married to a glassmaker, we move mainly in these circles and our connections and primary domain knowledge lie here. But the engineering principles involved in building equipment for this customer base – and often the equipment itself – is largely transferrable to other domains where high-quality, high-temperature equipment is required.

So we feel quite comfortable building commercial ovens for the catering industry, industrial heating equipment for factories, distillery equipment… you get the picture. And we occasionally take on projects unrelated to furnaces and heating if they present an interesting challenge.

Our Vision

We’re a young company, but we don’t plan on staying young for very long. Charles already has a great deal of experience in the field, and his collaboration with Dan is really premised on building and bringing to bear an innovating and revitalizing influence, and leading the industry by example.

We intend to be a household name within five years. Not every household, admittedly – but certainly the ones that count. And to those households in which we are a name, that name is to be synonymous with precision, control and innovation.

Our skillsets being what they are, we aim to bring a new fusion of hardware and software – a blend of confidence and convenience for both us and our customers to be proud of, and a quality and style that is unmistakably Surefire Engineering.

The Surefire Team

Three little words

Precision, control and innovation. These three words are a both a motto and a checklist. Meticulous research and development, state-of-the-art computer aided design, and a culture of continuous improvement mean that you can take these three components of quality for granted.

You need consistent results. You need to know that your signature technique is going to hit the mark every time. You need to know that your tools are able to reproduce your tried and tested recipes without fail. And when you try something new, you need to know you’re doing it right. We’re all about precision. We find tolerances intolerable.

You need precise outputs for precise inputs, and you need to be able to control those inputs with virtuosity. And if you can control your equipment at the same time as doing the shopping or picking up the kids – well, now you’re blurring the line between craftsmanship and sorcery. We’re here to put you in control – any time, any place*.

Innovation is arguably the defining human characteristic. We strive for improvement, we innovate, we improve, and then we strive some more. Innovation means improving on what came before. We came here to carry that torch. We begin every project with the question, “What can we improve today?”.

* “anywhere” is redundant, so we won’t be including that.

Let us keep you in the loop...

Sign up to our mailing list for special offers and updates on new products. We’ll never spam you or sell your information. We’re not like that.