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It's now three years in a row that Hanson Thorpe has won the toolmaker category of the Plastics Industry Awards.
The company has in-house design and CAD/CAM facilities, linked to a well equipped toolroom that includes several high specification CNC milling and spark/wire erosion machines. Tools it has manufactured range from single impression to multi impression tools, hot runner systems, unscrewing, 3D formed and twin shot tools.
The readers of PRW who voted for the Middleton-based company gave it good marks for all the criteria: speed of response, quality of product, complete project support and investment in design and manufacturing.
But it is in the last rating - investment - that Hanson Thorpe has particularly stood out in each year that it has won this award.
Investment in high-cost technology is, of course, a serious decision for any company, especially so in the hard-pressed toolmaking industry. But Hanson Thorpe has recognised that this is an essential requirement in order for it to offer the best services for its customers.
According to Stuart Hanson, director at Hanson Thorpe, the company is "always on the lookout for new technologies to improve our business performance. Investments that improve our quality, help reduce lead times and make us even more cost competitive are always of interest to us."
New equipment clearly needs to add value to its services. Last year its ability to offer trialling and validation of all new tools was boosted by the purchase of a 50 tonne Engel moulding machine. It is also used to complete small production runs of customers' tools.
There were also major purchases in 2006. A Mikron HSM300 GraphiteMaster allowed Hanson Thorpe to produce electrodes very quickly, with an accuracy of 5 microns.
A Mikron UCP600 five-axis machine was also installed in 2006. The unit enables the company to hard machine tooling much more accurately than with a conventional three-axis machine, giving a better surface finish.
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