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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, composites
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, aerospace, plastics and composites 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, aerospace,
molding, plastics and composites 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.
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 operates a service and support office located 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.
- THM
