How Dimide Started
Dimide started like most other companies, out of necessity to solve a problem. Our founder, Mike Costen, was building a table top made from wood planks but found it near impossible to get their edges aligned. He thought there has to be an easier way, and with over 30 years of engineering experience he knew he could create that better way. That's when Mike created the "Press" clamp shown below. This clamp allowed him to remove the bow out of the planks to make them all aligned!
Mike, as any innovator would, kept thinking about new applications for his idea. This made him realize that the same "Press" clamp could be rearranged to also act as a long reach clamp, as shown below.
Before getting too far, an adviser intervened and suggested that products should be purpose built. This is when a more efficient long reach clamp was designed, as shown below.
With two clamps designed, it was time to perform a market study and determine the business prospects. The study determined that the market for both the "Press" and "Long Reach" clamps were too small to enter. Although at a bit of a dead end, the study also uncovered that no innovation had occurred within the heavy duty C-Clamp market for over 60 years.
It was time to give heavy duty C-Clamps a much-needed upgrade through use of high-strength steels and advanced computer modeling that didn't exist 60 years ago. The original goal was to achieve two times the strength and two times the speed of existing clamps. This direction lead the design to incorporate a ratchet driven turnbuckle, shown below. With two threads, the turnbuckle ensured the clamp would open and close twice as fast as competing clamps. High strength steel and advanced computer modeling ensured the design would be twice as strong.
While originally a good idea, the part count and associated cost of manufacturing a ratchet into every clamp became a concern. That's when the idea to add a simple hex came to prominence. With a hex, you aren't limited to using only a ratchet, but could instead use any driver including: breaker bars, torque wrenches and impact wrenches!
The ability to use impact wrenches changed everything. Now instead of struggling to apply 900 pounds with hand tightening, anyone could use an impact wrench to effortlessly deliver over 4,000 pounds of clamping force! And you can do it ten times faster!
Now that Mike had a solid initial design it was time to begin to get user feedback, fine-tune the design and start a company now known as Dimide!
For those curious, the name Dimide is derived from the molecule Diimide, which has the strongest bond known to science. Because Diimide has three syllables, Di-i-mide, which makes it hard to pronounce, we took editorial liberties to shorten it to Dimide, Di-mide.