Steve Fowler

Experience

Steve began in R&D balancing, assembly and test at Rolls-Royce in 1987, then worked as a balancing engineer before founding his own balancing machine company in 1996. He grew it into an international supplier of balancing machines, spin test and NVH test equipment, and continued to lead it after its sale to a US test-equipment group, latterly also as Director of Propulsion for Europe. Over that time he has supplied hundreds of machines to automotive, aerospace, power generation and general industrial customers, from manual workshop balancers to fully automatic production cells.

Patents

Steve is a named inventor on granted US patents and international applications in balancing and rotor handling: a rotor drive coupling for balancing axle and differential assemblies (US 9,952,116), automated rotor transport and loading for balancing machines (US 9,849,590 and US 10,252,422), and adjustable rotor supports for the balancing process (published 2025). He also holds patents in spin testing, and the Balance & Test group's FusionCore diagnostic software is patent pending.

Standards work

Steve is a member of BSI committee GME/21/5, which is responsible for the UK's British Standard editions of the ISO 21940 rotor balancing standards, and of ISO/TC 108/SC 2, the international subcommittee whose balancing working group writes them. He was project manager for the rewrite of ISO 21940-21, the international standard for describing and evaluating balancing machines (second edition, 2022), which sets out how every balancing machine's accuracy is tested.