In the world of machining, precision is king, and few companies realize this more than PDQ Workholding and Tooling. If materials aren’t held in place properly, everything from timelines to production and unit costs are negatively impacted. With a top-notch engineering team, PDQ designs and manufactures custom-made workholding for demanding, high-production environments where accuracy and repeatability are crucial, such as medical manufacturing, automotive, aerospace, mining, agriculture, oil and gas, and more.
When PDQ Workholding and Tooling was founded by six workholding industry veterans in 2010, it was based on the old saying, “You can pick two out of three—price, delivery, quality—but you can’t have all three.” Refusing to believe that was good enough for its customers, PDQ’s motto was born: come to us, and you get all three—fast, competitively priced, and accurate.
Starting as a custom workholding business providing fixtures for high-volume machining, the company grew rapidly. In 2013/14, PDQ introduced custom tooling. “Workholding obviously refers to holding on to the part, and the custom tooling aspect is all the custom tools to help machine that part quickly,” explains Nick Scheumann, who served as PDQ’s General Manager for two years before becoming President in June.
Soon, the company started making horizontal machining pallets (the pallet in the machining center itself), along with the hydraulic pump that actuates fixtures and the hydraulic unit that integrates into the machine. “When it comes to production machining, we are a one-stop shop for everything you need,” says Scheumann. “We do projects with customers where they send us a part print, part model, and what machine they are running it in, and we will take care of everything else. We will get them concepts on how to fixture the part, process sheets and tooling drawings on how to machine the part, and we will provide all of that in a turnkey solution.”
Growth and acquisition
PDQ Workholding’s main 60,000-square-foot facility is located in Columbia city, Indiana, with a secondary 30,000-square-foot location in Slinger, Wisconsin just outside of Milwaukee that was part of an acquisition. Bringing several competitors on board since 2020, privately owned PDQ Workholding was itself acquired by Walter, which is part of the high-tech Swedish multinational engineering group Sandvik, founded in 1862.
Christoph Geigges, President of Walter, said in a June media release following the acquisition: “PDQ is one of the leading custom workholding players in the U.S., focusing on advanced fixtures used by companies in the same targeted industries as Walter. We know the initial tool supplier to any projects captures much of the replacement tool value in the first three years. Therefore, having PDQ within our portfolio of companies will significantly enhance business opportunities in the Americas and strengthen our value proposition to customers. We are delighted to have PDQ within the Walter organization.”
For the PDQ team of about 110—which includes skilled machinists, engineers, salespeople, and office staff—the acquisition by Walter is extremely positive. “While we still operate as PDQ, we are part of the global Walter organization, so there are opportunities to move up in that company,” explains Scheumann. For employees, there are plans for robust benefits.
Saving customers time and money
In its Quality Policy, the company states: “PDQ Workholding and Tooling will strive to meet customer expectations 100 percent of the time by facilitating risk-based thinking in a continual improvement environment.”
Indeed, many factors set PDQ apart from the competition, including its wide-ranging capabilities in engineering, machining, assembly, hydraulic units, and horizontal machining center (HMC) pallets. “We are the only company supplying custom fixturing and custom tooling from the same place,” says Scheumann. “A lot of times, those two different vendors have to work together to make sure each other’s designs are going to work right, and it’s up to the customer to balance that relationship. At PDQ, with both of those parts of the project being done by the same company, we handle that internally; there’s no need for the customer to help alleviate those pains and make sure those two vendors work well together.”
Although PDQ doesn’t go on site and do production part approval process (PPAP) and run-offs—working instead with OEM dealers—the company will supply everything needed, including CNC programming and components, and will help troubleshoot running of parts. At PDQ, engineers work with clients at every stage of a project, from initial concept to final design and manufacturing. And with decades of combined industry know-how, the PDQ team provides valuable advice and solutions on how to make projects as cost-effective as possible.
Ensuring quality
In workholding, parts must be held securely to ensure accuracy and repeatability. If hundreds, thousands, or even millions of a part are being run, they must be held the exact same way every single time. This is vital not only for consistency, but to meet safety regulations in automotive and other industry sectors, which become more stringent every year.
“Our designs are proven designs,” comments Scheumann, “and our engineers have been doing this for years. They know what works and what doesn’t. We are making fixturing that lasts.” It is not unheard of for PDQ to build fixtures that go on a CNC machine and remain on that machine for its entire lifespan.
At PDQ, all products are one-off, application-specific designs; nothing is made to inventory or held in stock. Cutting tools and fixtures are precision-engineered per purchase order. “Our workholding is all application-specific for extreme high-volume applications,” says Scheumann.
Although much of PDQ’s work is based in America’s rustbelt area, including Wisconsin and Indiana, the company is also active worldwide, with customers in Mexico, Thailand, and South Africa, and the recent acquisition by Walter will see even more unique projects for this team in the future.
“Fixturing is the very start of a production project,” says Scheumann. PDQ provides cutting tools, which means the company will be involved in discussions from the start. “Walter has plans for growth in all sectors—including fixtures and our custom tooling and PCD (Polycrystalline Diamond) cutting tools for aluminum components. Aluminum components aren’t machined with carbide inserts; a lot of them are machined with brazed-in diamond inserts. PCD tools accompanying fixtures is becoming an ever-increasing demand from customers that machine aluminum components, and the introduction of PCD tools within PDQ is a step to fulfilling this customer need. In addition to making new PCD tools, we will also have the capabilities to support our customers across North America with aftermarket service such as equipment repair, overhaul, and parts replacement. So, we are working on investing in that type of equipment at our PDQ facility so we can supply the type of tooling,” he shares. “That’s a big growth sector.”
