Insight

A review and preview of the global fastener market

Named after the Roman god who is often depicted as having two faces – due to its ability to look to the future and to the past – the Janus Perspective is a unique feature that includes a wide cross section of global fastener business leaders, who have all contributed their retrospective of 2019 and thoughts on prospects and challenges for 2020.

Andrew H. Kalnow, owner & CEO

Last year National Machinery crossed another milestone, celebrating its 145-year anniversary. We take pride that our company is not only the oldest machinery maker in the cold forming industry, but also a strong continuing leader in both high performance equipment and process technology. With the resources and activity of our process technology division, called Met-MAX Innovations™, National is dedicated to and highly accomplished in the field of net shape cold forming.

National began holding tooling seminars over 50 years ago to help teach customers both the basics and advanced techniques of cold forming manufacturing technology. Today we continue this technical industry leadership by holding these seminars in various languages around the world to approximately 200 participants each year. Then, fifteen years ago, we built upon this technical prowess by forming a bold and dedicated in-house division, called Met-MAX Innovations™.

Met-MAX stands for ‘Pushing Metal to the Maximum’. The Met-MAX Innovations division at National Machinery is strategically positioned to develop innovative net shape metal forming processes. It provides solutions to metal forming processes by utilising expert staff and a state of the art facility with advanced and even one of a kind development equipment. We are able to provide customers with net shape metal process development that yields new and higher value part applications and a competitive advantage.

Our Met-MAX engineering team consists of over a dozen design and development engineers. This includes design engineers in both Europe and Asia, as well as at our company headquarters in Tiffin, Ohio, in the United States. Over time our people have produced more than 800 patents, with additional patents currently pending. The combination of hands on technical expertise, and a unique set of R&D equipment in our working laboratory, create an unequaled capability for significant solutions in parts forming. Our focus is to develop new process technology for new or existing part shapes.

The ‘tools’ available to us for this creative process include DEFORM simulation software, measurement instruments, and numerous part progressions examples – from decades of work in the field. Importantly, and uniquely in the industry, this also includes special and dedicated cold forming equipment that is used for both development and temporary production purposes. Met-MAX’s capabilities include a full in-house tool manufacturing department with over 15 tool makers – who can quickly make detailed tooling components to support development on any of our multiple production machines.

PPAP (pre-production approval parts) runs can be made to prove the part dimensions and manufacturing process. These sample part runs are proof of the improved metal forming process development. Production can also be extended to validate tool life and even make longer batch runs as required. Furthermore, Met-MAX can satisfy confidentiality requirements by offering temporary proprietary production.

A note regarding Industry 4.0
National Machinery and its wholly owned subsidiary, SMART Machinery Srl, are active with ‘best in class’ cold forming manufacturers that are interested in leveraging technology advances driven by Industry 4.0. These initiatives with Industry 4.0 link data exchange with manufacturing equipment and processes. This linkage includes two way communication between operating systems and plant equipment that facilitates a range of value added functions; such as, proactive maintenance, advanced tooling systems, and self-adjusting machine features that optimise the manufacturing process.

An example of this technology is the ‘Die Match Adjusting’ system available on SMART Machinery’s full suite of thread rolling equipment. When coupled with industry leading process monitoring equipment, the thread roller has the capability to self-adjust itself without operator intervention to maintain perfect thread form. This closed loop technology enables the machine to automatically tune itself – reducing the dependency of a skilled machine operator to make manual adjustments.