Tie Down has always believed in growth through innovation in both product and manufacturing capabilities.  In the early 80’s, Tie Down became one of the first manufacturers in the Southeast to incorporate robotic welding.  Early 90’s brought CNC sheet laser cutting permitting the growth of products no longer dependent on the older legacy manufacturing methods that traditionally required great expense in both hard tooling and higher volume run requirements from coiled steel.  CNC laser cutting also allowed much greater freedom in engineering design as the shapes and profiles being produced in CAD were no longer constrained to hard tooling.  Tie Down was also an early adopter of 3D modeling as well as FEA analysis when such tools were still in their infancy

At the start of the new millennium and upon taking the lessons learned from both manufacturing and engineering growth, Tie Down again expanded its capabilities and became one of the first firms in North America to incorporate Laser Tube cutting.  In 2009, the first tube laser in the Western Hemisphere incorporating a fiber laser power source was commissioned.  2012 came the implementation of the first high powered fiber laser in a sheet cutting platform with the introduction of a 5,000 watt fiber laser and most recently in 2017, an 8000 watt fiber laser.  Coupled with cutting capabilities are our vast metal forming and robotic welding assets have also kept pace with our growth in tube, plate, and sheet cutting.  In 2016, the first and only high capacity bi-directional folding machine in all of North America was commissioned offering another unique ability to form sheet metal.

Our unique growth in both engineering and manufacturing innovation has not gone unnoticed, and these capabilities have been highly sought after by the most discerning of end users.  For very high volume manufacturing, we have achieved the highest of supplier quality and performance standards by firms such as United Technologies, Textron, and Kubota to name a few.  We also have performed cutting edge R&D and low volume production work for Lockheed Martin, Army Research Laboratory (ARL), Tank Automotive Research Development and Engineering center (TARDEC), and even NASA.