EFI has written about this topic previously in 2014; click here to read the old article. It may sound contradictory to mention the compound “nylon” when talking about hardware. After all, isn’t nylon basically a plastic? Well, yes, it is, but nylon has so many...
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Inventory Solutions for the New Year
Many manufacturers today utilize the proven Just-in-Time (JIT) model for inventory management, keeping just enough inventory on hand to keep production rolling without having excessive capital tied up maintaining large quantities of parts in stock. If you own or...
Self-Locking Fasteners
The benefit to most threaded fasteners such as bolts and screws is that they can be installed and uninstalled multiple times to enable the assembly and reassembly of the products in which they are used. The downside is that they can unintentionally loosen and cause...
Wire Management Products: Make Wire & Cable Management Easy!
Wire management can be an issue for a wide range of product manufacturing and system installations – from electronic systems to complex IT infrastructures. The only way to manage all of those wires, cables, and connections is with wire management products from...
Where Do Fasteners Come From?
Virtually every home and business workshop contains some version of a cigar box or old mayonnaise jar filled with loose screws, nuts, and bolts. Need a fastener for a project or a product? Just shake that container out on the workbench, rummage around, find the right...
Hardening and Tempering in the Fastener Industry
Anyone who has dealt with various metals and alloys in tools, blades, fasteners, and other metal products has probably run across the terms hardening and tempering. But what exactly do these terms mean and how do they affect metal? To begin with, both of these terms...
The Advantages of a VMI Program
Inventory is one of those necessary evils that every manufacturer seeks to control. The goal is to not sit on excess raw material, tying up large amounts of cash and space, but also not run short, halting production and losing time and money. Having the bare minimum...
Torquing Loads on Fasteners
So what exactly is torque? It’s defined as a twisting force that tends to cause rotation. When a socket is applied to a nut and turned down, the force rotates the bolt. As it tightens, the bolt has a tension stress acted upon it which stretches out the bolt.
Looking Ahead: Future Fastener Technology
The fastener industry – like most industries – is not standing still. As science, materials, and manufacturing make great strides, fastener technology is keeping pace with them. These are exciting times. Today, the US fastener industry is a multi-billion dollar chunk...
Nuts in the Fastener World
First, let’s have a quick refresher on the unique fastening ability of nuts and bolts. As we all know, a nut is a fastener featuring a threaded hole and is always used with a mating bolt to fasten a stack of parts together. The two components are held together by a...