Thame Workholding can solve the puzzle of holding CNC machined components..

As a UK manufacturer of workholding equipment, Thame Workholding is an industry leader, supply markets around the world. MTDCNC visited Thame to find out more…

Thame Workholding’s David Handley says: “here it Thame we make hundreds of thousands of chuck jaws and will be making them since 1975, from there we evolved into all kinds of workholding. We work with designers, engineers, integrators and manufacturers. The facilities we have here at Thame our extensive. We have manufacturing with automated machines, we have multi-pallet multi-axis machines, laser marking and we have fantastic design facilities. We have 3D CAD/CAM and we have all the toys that you would need to create the workholding solution you want.”

Looking closer at the available jaws, Paul Hulbert from Thame Workholding adds: “We have a very large range of standard jaws, so customers can phone up for jaws for a 12-inch chuck and they can get a long jaw, a short jaw or a tall jaw. With the specials, we manufacture for aerospace, automotive and even things like food mixers. Everybody needs to hold the things they make.”

Our standard range of jaws are very comprehensive it starts with serrated jaws through to slotted tenant scroll jaws, pendulums jaws – any type of jaw that is needed for a chuck. We do standard jaws, but we can also modify for a specific customer need or more importantly, we are a fantastic in-house design team. This enables us to design something specific for your workholding problem, we can reverse engineer any solution to resolve your problem.

Thame Workholding’s David Handley says: “If the customer needs something that isn’t standard, we will make the special products. We will make everything from nanoproducts through to very large workholding equipment. We make all types of fixtures and workholding solutions. We make standard checks, special checks, vacuum chucks – we integrate complete systems to give you one-stop workholding solutions.”

Thame workholding also supplies a SOLID Point zero-point clamping system that benefits from exceptional accuracy and ease-of-use. It also uses a wedge clamp system that generates three times pulldown retraction power, which is stronger than anybody else’s on the market. It also has the facility of using a base plate that covers both 52mm centres and 96mm. so, one plate will allow you to use small and large vices. This allows customers to save money and be more productive. The SOLID Point line is a quick and easy solution that allows users to hop over from advice to a chuck or from a vacuum fixture to a 90° block, so it is very easy to use. If you have more than one plate on the machine, you can run more than one part, so at the end of the shift you can load your machine with multiple parts and leave the machine to run unmanned, coming to be back in the morning to machine with completed parts.

Thame are also distributors for a range of complementary products, offering complete versatility and flexibility. “Another very important product we offer is vacuum clamping. Not many people always consider this, but it is perfect for very fragile or thin parts. It allows you to cut very thin materials right to the very edge, it can give you opportunities in other workholding solutions can’t.”

“We are very proud to manufacture very high-quality products here in the UK, but we know that we have to back that up the service and support that the industry requires. We train our customers to use the products properly and we service the products regularly to keep everything good working order and we repair anything that ever goes wrong – things break and that just happens. We offer a full service to keep our customers coming back time and time again. We are a family business that offers unsurpassed service for our customers and we have some of the world-leading product lines and special solutions,” concludes Thame Workholding’s David Handley.