Worcestershire Medal Service, the largest medal supplier in the UK, stands as a testament to how a family business built on passion can flourish. With their new Head Office located on Bromsgrove High Street with a state-of-the-art toolroom nearby, the company has become a leader in medal manufacturing, thanks in part to the advanced EDM CNC wire cutting and precision hole drilling technology provided by the Excetek range from Warwick Machine Tools.
Established in 1988, Worcestershire Medal Service was born out of a fascination with medals in a shop window, which sparked a lifelong hobby for the CEO. Jack McDermott, who oversees the company’s toolroom, recalls how his father started the business with just a fax machine and a desk at home while working a day job in IT. “Nan always said it was a fad,” Jack says, “but… today we are 74 strong across the whole business.”
Originally offering a refurbishment and mounting service for medals, as well as buying and selling original and replica medals, the company soon expanded and relocated to a small office above a butcher shop in Catshill, just a stone’s throw away from where the toolroom is currently located.
Due to the inconsistent quality of the miniature medals from various suppliers, a decision was made in 2004 to invest in a factory. The factory originally manufactured badges and plaques but under the new ownership changed direction to manufacture full-size and miniature medals. It later expanded to fulfil contracts for St John and the Central Chancery, including prestigious awards such as the OBE, MBE, and Orders of Knighthood, covering both high civilian and military honours. Today, Worcestershire Medal Service handles all military awards and a large percentage of civil honours in the UK.
“Of course, we have to tender on price, quality, and delivery, as well as customer service,” Jack explains. “We won the contract for the Diamond Jubilee for the late Queen, while also branching out into the Commonwealth doing National Honours for many of the Caribbean countries. We also have customers in the South Pacific, Middle East, Africa, and Canada.”
Medal collectors represent a global business for the company, with discerning customers purchasing replicas via their online platform. However, the company’s expertise extends beyond medal collectors, securing a contract in 2018 with the UK Ministry of Defence to produce gallantry, campaign, and long service awards for the UK Armed Forces – a contract that was renewed in 2022. Following the accession of His Majesty King Charles III, Jack, at just 25 years old, became the youngest official designer of a monarch’s effigy for medals. His initials are now engraved beneath King Charles’ image on each medal awarded in the UK.
“For the Coronation medal, the designer at the Royal Mint did the obverse side…using traditional hand-carved plaster techniques on a 300 mm blank. Mine was done digitally using different skill sets – you could say one side represents ‘old school’ while the other features the very latest software and manufacturing technology,” Jack says. Jack’s father, not to be outdone, designed the reverse of the Coronation medal and its ribbon.
The order for the Coronation medal totals nearly half a million pieces, necessitating 40 sets of dies for production at the factory.
While Worcestershire Medal Service has been cutting medal die sets for around 15 years, its bespoke toolroom, operational for just over 2 years, now has 8 skilled staff and represents a significant leap forward. In addition to the scanning technology and software, the toolroom’s capabilities were also enhanced by the company’s ‘old school’ toolmaker, John, who is in his seventies and has since retired.
As Jack says, “John is one of the smartest people I have ever worked with and fortunately he is working with us to capture his knowledge and skills using technology. His input to the [machine tool] investments we made when we started Worcestershire Medal Toolroom was fundamental. The goal was to manufacture everything we possibly could in-house – the only things we outsource are hardening and surface treatments, or coatings.”
Alongside the ubiquitous surface grinder, a mill-turn lathe and a vertical machining centre were installed to accommodate the diverse shapes of medals, which are not always round. In addition to traditional machinery, “Wire EDM is a vital part of our toolmaking process because the medal is not just the round stamped piece, we have to produce the suspensions and so on, so we have a vast array of tools developed for this,” Jack explains.
He continues: “What Warwick Machine Tools offer with the Excetek range is perfect for us. They are a cost-effective solution that is incredibly accurate and reliable. For a company setting up a toolroom from scratch, it is perfect, and they have worked exceptionally well allowing us to get into different engineering sectors. The Excetek V400G CNC wire cut EDM was sized perfectly for the work we do, as well as having a compact footprint to fit on the 2,500 ft² shopfloor. For example, we can cut very small precision copper tungsten electrodes, getting four out of a 20 mm diameter bar.”
Providing comparative performance levels to Swiss and Japanese wire EDM machines, the Excetek V400G offers a major cost saving against any equivalent size machine tool, and the price includes training and installation. With travels in the X-axis to 400 mm and 300 mm in Y-axis, it can accommodate larger workpieces up to 750 x 550 x 215 mm weighing up to 500 kg.
Features like automatic wire feed and threading, submerged wire threading, and advanced programming options make the V400G an indispensable tool. Excetek’s renowned automatic wire feed and threading system is designed for continuous, unmanned operation around-the-clock. The AWT system allows the wire to be threaded precisely at the point of the breakage, ensuring nearly 100 percent reliability without needing to return to the start position. This is achieved through an automated annealing system that straightens the wire, enabling it to be threaded directly during machining. Submerged wire threading is also possible, which removes the need to drain and refill the tank. A water jet assist system is available for automatic wire feeds on tall workpieces. It accommodates wire diameters from 0.15 to 0.3 mm, which can be used and for extended operations, a 50 kg jumbo wire feeder can also be fitted.
Programming can be done using standard ISO G code or Excetek’s Icon Assistant conversational software, which uses the controls extensive database of cutting technologies.
Jack states that the Excetek HD400C EDM hole drill was purchased to produce Breast Stars for Orders of chivalry, which is “fundamentally a large shiny badge shaped as a star with multiple pyramid forms diamond milled on the surface to reflect light. Between almost every pyramid form is a 0.75 mm diameter hole that is there to let light through so the whole thing shines better”.
Continuing: “Before the Excetek HD400C we used a pillar drill loaded with a 0.75 mm tool going between the pyramids. This was both frustratingly time consuming for someone stuck on the job and extremely costly due to the amount of drilling tools being consumed or snapped. Now we can run unmanned and lights out using an EROWA fixturing system supplied by Warwick Machine Tools’ sister company, REM Systems, to accurately locate the workpiece.”
The wire EDM machine is programmed to cut the outline shape, incorporating sacrificial edges that are removed at the end of the process. The toolroom team uses plates mounted on the EROWA zero-point system to clamp these edges, allowing the workpiece to be moved between machines without any loss of accuracy or the need for re-setup. With a 600 by 350 mm worktable and axis travels of 400 x 300 x 400 mm in X, Y, and Z, the HD400C hole drill easily accommodates these precisely fixtured parts.
Typical of the work carried out, Jack highlights the Breast Star for the Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB) or Dame Commander of the Order of the Bath (DCB). This intricate piece requires 256 precisely drilled holes, and the company has developed specialised programmes to achieve this using exactly one 0.6 mm diameter copper electrode. The hole drill is equipped with a tool changer, so that sister tools can be used to produce parts that require more than the 256 holes that a single electrode can achieve. The HD400C can drill holes between 0.3 and 3 mm in diameter in any conductive material with precision. Once drilled, the star is transferred from the hole drill on the EROWA fixture and positioned on the wire cutting machine to remove the surrounding ‘scrap.’ The clamping plate is then reloaded with a new star blank, and the entire process is repeated. Jack says: “The Excetek machines are perfect for our needs and the team at WMT has worked with us to get us up and running as efficiently as possible. In terms of return on investment, the wire machine has paid for itself within a year, which is exceptional.”
All of the details on the medal dies are meticulously hand polished to a mirror finish, ensuring that when the medal is struck, the detail is perfectly transferred with minimal additional finishing required. However, Jack notes that finding individuals interested in entering the engineering field has been challenging. “We had to find an apprentice to learn the intricate polishing we need to do, as our existing polisher, who has a wealth of experience, wants to plan for retirement, and we want to pass on the skills,” he explains.
Once again, the company is turning to technology to help, with the upcoming installation of a new £500,000 laser engraving machine. This innovative equipment will not only reduce die production time by half, but it will also enhance surface detail fourfold, and significantly cut final polishing time. This investment underscores the company’s commitment to pioneering technological advancements in an industry that is often traditional and conservative, further solidifying its role as an innovative leader.
Each of the millions of medals produced annually is hand-assembled. The foot fitting is attached to the medal, providing the interface for either a suspension bar or ring, which is hand riveted depending on the design. From transforming a blank steel billet into a fully polished and engraved die, to stamping, assembling, ribboning, and packaging - all processes are rigorously managed under the company’s quality control. As Jack emphasises: “You can get cheap and cheerful, but if you want a quality medal, you come to Worcestershire Medal Service.”
As a time-served, fully indentured apprentice toolmaker he concludes: “My passion is making things and thanks to the Excetek EDM machines from Warwick Machine Tools I get to do that every day.”