Powerhold Begins Countdown to 50th Birthday

Powerhold Incorporated is just weeks away from the completion of their 50th year in business. Powerhold, originally formed under the name PowerGrip, was founded in January 1958 in a garage in Rockfall, CT to manufacture and sell the original 3B air operated chuck actuator. Richard Spooner, the longest current employee at Powerhold, joined the company in 1965 and was promoted to CEO and president of Powerhold in 1979. He has seen the company through many business cycles and market changes and has overseen the transformation of Powerhold to a custom workholding provider. In 1996, Richard became the chairman of the TC-11 committee for chucks and chuck jaw standards, and in 2000, he helped found and became the first chairman of the Workholding Products Group of AMT. Spooner remains the CEO of Powerhold today and in 2005

Brothers Chad, Will and Steve Spooner will lead Powerhold into the next 50 years.

appointed Chad Spooner as company president, a position he holds today.

According to Richard, "When begun, Powerhold was a small provider or power chucks and cylinders in a market dominated by large, well-established manufacturers, serving the US machine tool industry. Today, we are known worldwide, and one of just a few remaining domestic providers of chucks and cylinders. We are proud of our past and will use our over 50 years of experience in workholding to prosper in the next 50 years."

The 3B actuator and Powerhold high-speed chuck products were the core products for many years, but Powerhold has always been known for developing unique solutions for workholding applications. In 1975 they introduced the first inexpensive gage to test dynamic forces of chuck jaws. In 1985 they designed and sold a 5.5" 3-jaw chuck to operate at 10,000-RPM. In 1986 Powerhold designed a unique automatic-offsetting chuck that can permit two offset bores to be machined in a single clamping, without stopping the spindle to do the offset. The Auto-Offset remains the industry standard for high-production offset applications.

For the past 15 years, anticipating the major effect of low-cost offshore chuck manufacturers for standard chuck products, Powerhold has transformed into a part-specific, custom workholding specialist. They continue to offer standard power chucks and actuators, live and dead centers and stationary milling chucks by utilizing partner relationships with manufacturers as Gamet Precision, Karl Bruckner, Grip SRL, and Nikko-Nomura. These arrangements permit Powerhold to continue to serve more basic workholding needs at their accounts while they focus their design and manufacturing efforts to serve the more challenging workholding applications that require an engineered design solution. They estimate that 70% of their sales now come from custom-designed products, and anticipate that this number will continue to grow. Over the past decade, they have developed a specialty for design of hydraulic trunion fixtures and other 4th and 5th axis mill workholding systems.

Another change that took place over the past decade was a shift from contract manufacturing of Powerhold products to in-house manufacturing. Powerhold now has a complete machine shop with turn, mill and grind capabilities, with a mix of manual and CNC machines and a staff of skilled toolmakers to produce each custom item to the required specification and tolerance.

"I am excited to report that we have completed 50 years with an exceptional reputation and solid track record," said Chad Spooner. "We begin the next 50 years with the most capable sales, engineering and manufacturing staff the company has ever employed."

For more information contact:

Powerhold, Inc.

Old Indian Trail

P.O. Box 447

Middlefield, CT 06455-0447

860-349-1044

www.powerholdinc.com

Southwest

TX, LA, OK, AR

Will Spooner

Powerhold Inc.

860-349-1044