Fasteners save on waste
A new development at Bighead Bonding Fasteners is achieving 60% savings for customers.
A new development at Bighead Bonding Fasteners is achieving 60% savings for customers.
Bighead's new Bigrings use the minimum of material, yet make possible the production of competitively priced products that are light in weight, strong and versatile.
The Bigrings consist of two or more concentric rings of steel or stainless steel wire with studs, nuts or collars accurately fixed at strategic positions, in any combination - male, female, threaded or unthreaded - to suit individual needs.
Ken Stanley, Bighead managing director, says the alternative approach involves too much wasted material.
"The conventional way of making a bondable ring is to cut a circle out of a sheet of perforated metal and throw about 85% of it away.
But, with the manufacture of Bigrings, we have a 100% scrap-free process".
Applications already include boat porthole flanges, road signs and headlamp mountings for high-speed trains.
All Bighead fasteners stay in place when bonded-in because they capture the plastic which flows through them and this keys them into position.
With the Bigrings, the plastic flows through the gap between the rings and, once bonded into materials such as phenolic resins, GRP, polypropylene and ABS, they will not rotate or pull out.
Demand for the new product has been high and a German engineering group is currently carrying out a third phase of rigorous pressure testing.
If successful, the company is expected to place an order worth GBP 330,000 a year to use Bigrings in domestic heating tanks.
Stanley says: "Bigrings are certainly taking off.
They are strong, light in weight and easy to use in all the usual moulding processes".
Because customers' needs vary, Bigrings are not stocked.
But a range of rings, from 60 to 1000mm diameter in 10mm intervals, are always available to enable prototype or production quantities to be assembled quickly.
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