
Thermwood
Corporation was established in 1969 as a plastic
molder of wood grained parts for the furniture industry, hence
the name “Thermwood”. From the beginning Thermwood
incorporated a high level of technology in its business.
For example, to mold its plastic parts
Thermwood developed a unique molding process and much of the plastic
molding and trimming machinery Thermwood used was designed and built
in-house. In
the mid-1970s, it developed the first commercial CNC machine tool control
and used it to build machinery to trim its plastic parts. Thermwood
began selling this trim equipment for plastics and woodworking applications
and the CNC router was born. Thermwood is currently the oldest CNC
router company and continues to offer products for the woodworking,
plastics and aerospace industries. In addition to numerous applications
in the wood, furniture and cabinet industries, Thermwood machines have
also been used to process a wide variety of well-known products.
The interiors of most commercial jet airliners are processed on Thermwood
machines, as are many helicopter blades, structural parts for military
aircraft and tile underlayment for the space shuttle. Thermwood machines
produce parts from bowling alleys to bicycle helmets, spas, motorcycle
parts to truck bodies. Many of the sets on Broadway were built on Thermwood
machines, as were sets for movies such as Batman, Jurassic Park 3 and
the latest Star Wars. Thermwood machines helped rebuild both Windsor
Castle and the Opera House in London. Even NASA has used Thermwood
machines to build the Mars Flyer and Mars Lander.
Thermwood
is deeply involved in CNC technology and technology development, incorporating
a high level of next generation control technology in its products.
It remains the only major CNC router company in the world that designs and
builds its own high-end CNC control and has more patents on CNC router technology
than all other CNC router manufacturers combined. Thermwood’s control has become a world-wide
standard in certain aerospace and defense applications.
Products and Services: 
Thermwood develops, manufacturers and
distributes technology based products and software for the manufacturing
sector. We primarily target the woodworking, plastics molding and aerospace
industries but also supply products and services to a variety of other
industries from boating and entertainment to medical.
Our primary manufacturered products are based around CNC routers. In this area
we provide a diverse product offering including machines, hardware, tooling,
software, components, materials and a variety of services. Products with major
engineering content, such as CNC machines are sold through a dealer network.
Thermwood dealers generally only represent Thermwood products and most have been
with Thermwood for ten to twenty years, assuring both knowledge and experience.
Thermwood also manages a cooperative of over 25,000 custom cabinet shops called
eCabinet Systems. We supply these shops with advanced cabinet design and room
layout software for free and then use the software and a series of web based
stores to distribute almost 20,000 products from a variety of industry vendors
to cooperative members. One of our web stores, WoodworkersWholesale.com, is directly
connected to Amazon.com and targets the home woodworking hobbyist.
Formal technical training is another product Thermwood offers and, in addition
to training seminars held around the US each year we also maintain a modern educational
facility where we provide formal training for our products, third-party software
products and advanced manufacturing technology.
Facilities:
Thermwood
corporate headquarters are located in the Southern Indiana town of
Dale, just off Interstate 64 about half way between Evansville, Indiana
and Louisville, Kentucky. Our main facility consists of 175,000 square
feet which includes both an office/showroom and an engineering and
manufacturing plant. A second building located approximately one mile
North houses software development personnel. Thermwood also has a service
and support office in the North of England in County Durham.
The Office/Showroom is a 20,400 square foot two story office building that consists
of executive offices, four high-tech formal training class rooms, two dining
rooms, meeting and conference rooms and a combination showroom and customer demonstration
facility. This building also houses Thermwood’s IT center which includes
extensive web servers and worldwide corporate network hardware.
The
modern manufacturing facility houses various industrial processes from steel
cutting, bending, forming and welding to electronic board assembly and CNC control
manufacturing. Thermwood builds the vast majority of every system in-house and
uses a variety of advanced manufacturing techniques including finite element
analysis, vibration stress relief and three-dimensional laser interferometers.
Every process is controlled using highly integrated manufacturing software and
the factory runs virtually “paperless”. In addition to manufacturing
processes, the main plant also houses design engineering, customer support and
technical service including the “virtual service” link centers. Also
housed in the main plant are two “Micro-Factories for Furniture” which
are capable of building and finishing virtually any piece of wood furniture.
These Micro-Factories are used to demonstrate advanced furniture building technology
and to train customers to use these advanced techniques. |