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Company Founder.. Bob Hughes 

Company History....

Clifty Engineering & Tool Company was founded November, 24, 1961 by Robert (Bob) D. Hughes. Bob was a local resident of Dupont, Indiana when he started the business. Bob had past experience as a welder at a local manufacturing facility called Williamson Heater. Later Bob changed jobs. He worked in Columbus, Indiana at Product Engineering (PECO) as a tool and die designer. During his employment with Product Engineering he dreamed of having his own tool and die business of his own. After much planning he was on his way. 
Establishing the business at current site, the business has made many expansions. Starting with a small building about the size of a two car garage up to the enormous size we are today.

The following is an article that appeared in the Madison Courier on May 24, 2004. This article helps illustrates some of the history of Clifty Engineering.

RETOOLING Hughes steps down at Clifty Engineering

By: Peggy Vlerebome
Courier Staff Writer

Hughes, 70, who co-founded the company in 1961 and is the major stockholder, remains the CEO.  Hughes grew up in Dupont and graduated from high school there.

“I went to I.U. a year,” he said. “I was a very poor student and quit.” He came back to Madison and went to work as a welder at Williamson Heater, but got burned by a bad flash one day and so left. He went up to Columbus and applied for a job at Product Engineering. “The damn fools hired me,” he said, laughing.

He was hired as a tool and die apprentice and a tool and die designer. His year at I.U. hadn’t been for naught, it turned out.

“I took art at I.U.,” Hughes said. It turned out the man who hired him, Gene Burbrinck, did it on the strength of that. “”Tool and die design is artistic,” Hughes said. “The abilities that make a good artist make a good tool and die maker.” Burbrinck was his leader for six of the nearly nine years Hughes worked for the company.

“I never ever thought of going into business,” Hughes said. But then he and two other guys, Harold Harvey and Don Chambers, decided to open their own business in Columbus.When Madison Realtor John Scott Sr. heard about it over at the courthouse, where Bob Hughes’ wife, Carol, worked for her father-in-law, the county treasurer, he didn’t want a home-grown product opening a business somewhere else.Scott pointed Hughes to Madison Tool and Die, and Hughes spent six months reviewing the company’s records before he and his partners decided whether to buy it. Chambers backed out of the partnership, and was replaced by Paul Arthur.

“Each of us had $4,000 apiece,” Hughes said. “So we had $12,000.”

Chambers’ brother, Burton, led Hughes to Jim Scott, “my then and current CPA,” Hughes said. He also hooked up with attorney George Medford, who advised the partners to incorporate.

Hughes and Harvey bought out Arthur in 1966 because he had other interests he wanted to pursue. That left Hughes and Harvey. Hughes bought the rest of Harvey’s stock in 1978, paying it off in 1988.

“That’s the reason Clifty Engineering was able to survive,” Hughes said.

Since then, Hughes has sold 2,500 shares of his stock and given away 1,200, gifting it to those closest to him at the company and to people who have retired after long service. Now he owns 49.9 percent as part of his estate plan. His first stockholder was his secretary, Betty Helton, who has worked at Clifty Engineering for 38 years.

Size, work force grow

When Clifty Engineering opened, it was on a half-acre in a small building that looked like a service garage and had 1,200 square feet. There were three employees. Hughes’ date of hire was Nov. 24, 1961.

A dozen construction projects later, Clifty Engineering has 60,000 square feet on 12 acres and 105 employees who work in three shifts. The original part of the building is now just a small part at the front.

As the company has expanded in size and work force, the equipment has changed to high-tech production with computer-aided design, to behemoth machinery for the biggest jobs and to machines guided by computers.

Clifty’s largest punch press is an 850-ton giant that dwarfs everything else in the shop. It has a 90-inch by 144-inch bed to handle big jobs. It is the largest of Clifty Engineering’s coil feed punch presses. The other machinery includes milling machines, lathes, jib grinders and bores, welding, grinders, saws and shears.

The first wire electric discharge machine “was a very major start” in Clifty’s growth, Hughes said. “It was our first real piece of sophistication.”

He and the top managers talked about who should be chosen to operate it. The operator, they agreed, should be “the very best skilled person we have in the plant,” Hughes said. “That turned out to be Ray Combs.”

One of Hughes’ proudest achievements is that Clifty Engineering is a company where people go to work and stay. The 50 employees who have been there the longest have worked for Clifty Engineering a total of 995 years. Of those 50 employees, 41 started as apprentices.

The longtime employees include senior vice president Arnold W. Curry, 42 years; vice president-manufacturing Cecil E. Dunn, 41 years; Daniel A. McCain, 35 years; Roy C. Davis, 32 years; and Earl K. Handlon, 31 years. Curry, Dunn, Davis, Handlon, Dunn started as apprentices.

Clifty Engineering started its apprenticeship program the second year after it was founded. Apprenticeships are available in toolmaker, tool designer, machinist, wire EDM operator, and maintenance mechanic. About 120 apprentices have been trained at Clifty Engineering, which is registered with the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Apprenticeship and Training. The company uses Education Direct, a part of Thomson Learning formerly known as International Correspondence Schools, which requires 144 hours of study outside the shop. The school allows a 70 percent grade for passing, but Clifty Engineering requires 80 percent for hiring.

Another proud achievement for Hughes is that Clifty Engineering as a workplace is what Hughes set out for it to be. “I had the idea of creating a fair and honest relationship with my employees, open and not in a position where only the squeaky wheel got greased.”

Employees know what to expect and when, and how the point system used to evaluate them works. New employees have a 60-day trial, followed by a raise, then an automatic raise every 12 weeks. They are evaluated after a year, then twice a year after that. After four years, an employee can be at the top pay rate, Hughes said.

Even nearly 50 years in the tool and die business, Hughes still is enthusiastic.

“The tool and die business is interesting,” Hughes said.

It can be downright fun, too — and visible. Clifty Engineering employees design their annual entry in the Regatta Festival bed race and do quite well in the competition. The company’s nearly 10-foot-tall granite logo in front of the business at 2949 Clifty Drive and the mailbox support next to the road aren’t just models of a micrometer, which is a caliper instrument used for measuring minute distances. They both were designed at Clifty Engineering and are exact scale models of Hughes’ first micrometer. The granite sign is 28 times bigger than the original, while the mailbox is 10 times bigger.

Plant Expansions since 1961