Precision subcontract machining · Sheffield

Held to five microns, proved before it leaves.

Name: Hollowgate Precision Ltd
Address: Unit 4, Parkwood Works, Hollowgate, Sheffield S3 8QT
Telephone: 0114 272 4180

Five-axis machining, wire EDM and full CMM inspection for aerospace, medical and motorsport. Every part ships with its measured report, not a promise.

Send a drawingSee our capability list

Positional tolerance

±0.005

On-time delivery, 2025

99.2%

Machining since

1958

Datum A

One part, five things that have to be right

A pump flange we make in batches of 400. Point at any line in the schedule and it lights up on the section — the same five characteristics we measure on every tenth part.

Drawing simplified for the web. Send us the real one — STEP, IGES, Parasolid or a PDF of a hand sketch, we have quoted from all four this month.

Sixty-eight years on Hollowgate

Hollowgate Precision was started in 1958 by Jack Alderman, who had served his time as a toolmaker at one of the big Sheffield steelworks and wanted to make parts rather than manage people making them. His granddaughter Ruth runs it now, from the same yard, with twenty-two people and six machines. The firm has changed almost everything about how it works in that time — from capstan lathes to offline-programmed five-axis, from a steel rule to a Zeiss CMM in a temperature-controlled room — and almost nothing about why. We make components to a drawing, we measure them properly, and we tell customers the truth about what we can and cannot hold. Roughly 70% of our work in 2025 was for customers who have been with us more than five years.

What we make

Five-axis machining · £68/hr

Three machines with through-spindle coolant and probing, 600 × 500 × 450 mm envelope. Impellers, manifolds, structural brackets and instrument bodies, finished in one or two set-ups rather than five.

Wire EDM · £74/hr

Submerged, auto-threading, running overnight unattended. For internal square corners, thin sections, hardened material after heat treat, and radii smaller than any cutter that would survive the job.

Metrology · £95/hr

Zeiss bridge CMM in a room held at 20°C ±1°C. First-off, in-process and final inspection on our own work, plus third-party inspection for manufacturers without the environment for it.

Route card

How a part moves through the shop

Four operations, in this order, on every job from a one-off prototype to a batch of five thousand.

OP 10

Drawing review

An engineer reads your drawing before anyone quotes it. If a tolerance is going to cost you money for no functional gain, we tell you at this stage rather than after you have paid for it.

OP 20

Programme and prove

Toolpaths written offline and proved in the simulator, then a first-off cut and measured. Nothing goes into a batch until the first one has passed.

OP 30

Machine and gauge

Cutting on the five-axis and the wire, with in-process gauging at set intervals. The operator holds the part, and the same operator holds the batch.

OP 40

Inspect and report

Full CMM report against the drawing, AS9102 first-article where the contract asks for it, and the measured data goes in the box with the parts.

Turned shaft, CMM probe, eight-blade impeller

What customers say when you ask them properly

Collected at the 2025 supplier reviews, printed as given.

Colin Waite

Principal Design Engineer, aerospace tier 2

“They rang me about a datum scheme that would have worked but would have doubled the inspection cost, and suggested a different one. No supplier had ever read a drawing of mine that closely before quoting it. We moved four part numbers across that year.”

Fiona Brand

Head of Procurement, surgical instruments

“99.2% on time across 340 deliveries, and on the two that slipped they told us before we noticed. That is genuinely rare. Our audit of them in March closed with no findings, which has happened once before in eleven years.”

Sanjay Kapoor

Quality Manager, Class II medical device OEM

“Priya sends the CMM data as measured values, not just pass or fail. When we had a drift on a bore over a long batch we could see it in their own numbers and we caught it at part 180 rather than at goods-in. That is what ISO 13485 is supposed to feel like.”

Elin Møller

Founder, motorsport damper start-up

“We arrived with a hand sketch and no idea what anything should cost. Ruth quoted it, then told us which three dimensions were driving 70% of the price and why. We changed two of them and the part came in at £310 instead of £680.”

Barry Nuttall

Retired toolmaker, Sheffield

“I served my time down the road at Firth Brown and I am hard to impress about a shop floor. Theirs is clean, the machines are on ticket, and there are four apprentices in there. That last one is the bit nobody else in this city is doing.”

Asked before a drawing is ever sent

The four things engineers and buyers want to know before they spend an afternoon preparing an enquiry.

A 3D model in STEP, IGES or Parasolid plus a dimensioned drawing in PDF is ideal, because the model tells us how to cut it and the drawing tells us what actually matters. If you only have one of the two, send it anyway — we quote from models alone and from hand sketches most weeks. Tell us the quantity, the material if it is specified, and the date you need it. Everything is held under NDA from the moment it arrives, without you having to ask.

Routinely ±0.005 mm on a machined feature in the five-axis cell, and ±0.002 mm on ground and lapped surfaces where the drawing calls for it. That is the honest working figure rather than the best number we have ever achieved on one part on a good day. Anything tighter than ±0.002 mm we will tell you is outside what we will commit to, and usually suggest who can do it. The number matters far less than whether the supplier will stand behind it.

No. We machine one-offs, and about a fifth of what leaves the building is a single part — a prototype, a replacement for something obsolete, or a fixture. There is a £180 minimum set-up charge on any job, because the programming and workholding cost the same whether we make one or fifty, so a single part typically lands between £340 and £900. Batches from 50 to 5,000 are where the per-part price drops properly.

Standard lead time is 10 to 15 working days from order for a first article, and 15 to 20 for a production batch. We keep one five-axis machine deliberately unloaded for expedite work, so genuine AOG and line-down jobs go on in 48 to 72 hours at a 40% premium — we would rather charge for it honestly than pretend everything is urgent. Repeat parts from a proven programme are usually 5 to 8 days.

Send it over

Every quote is read by someone who has cut the part.

Send a STEP file or a PDF and we will come back inside two working days with a price, a lead time and — where it matters — a note on anything in the drawing that will cost you money without earning it.

Send a drawingCall 0114 272 4180

AS9100D

Aerospace quality

ISO 13485

Medical devices

ISO 9001

Since 1994

Drawings held under NDA as standard · ITAR-controlled work not undertaken · Quotes valid 30 days

Send a drawing

Attach a STEP file or a PDF, tell us the quantity and the date you need it, and an engineer will come back inside two working days. Held under NDA from the moment it arrives.

Find us

Hollowgate Precision Ltd

Unit 4, Parkwood Works, Hollowgate, Sheffield S3 8QT
0114 272 4180
Mo-Th 07:00-17:30, Fr 07:00-13:00