“Thinking outside the box…”
In February of 1996 a potential customer asked if Metallon could suggest a better, more cost effective way to produce their powdered metal emergency brake adjusting nut. Working in conjunction with their engineering group, we were successful in developing a stamping that not only exceeded the strength of the powdered metal part but also reduced the cost by about 50%. Metallon now manufactures these in 2 sizes and continues to supply these at a rate of approx. 65,000 units per week.

In 1997 Metallon was asked by a wire harness supplier if we would quote on 6 or 8 ring terminals that the current supplier was going to discontinue. A meeting was set up with the OEM’s engineers and purchasing people. During the meeting it was mentioned that the OEM had approx. 140 different ring terminals and they wanted them all quoted. During the subsequent review process, it was discovered that there were many overlapping tolerances and the number of parts could significantly be reduced. Within 6 months, Metallon was producing 31 parts in 7 die sets. This eliminated approximately 109 parts from the OEM’s Bill of Materials resulting in huge savings for our new customer!

The aircraft brake pad assembly cells originally consisted of one operator inserting a screw machined component into the cup, which was then placed onto a rotary table. It was then orbital riveted together. Batches of these were then moved to a spot welding operator who then inserted them in a channel feed to the welding point. This process was interrupted periodically for pull-testing to qualify strength of weld.

Before

The entire operation is now done in one station: Automatic bowl feeders now pick and place the screw machined part into the cup. It advances to the next station which orients the part for welding and then to the welding station itself and completion.

After

In 1989 Metallon was asked to develop a sheet metal roofing fastener that could compete with an existing product. The initial result was a 2-piece assembly with one part made in a four-slide machine, the mating part made in a progressive tool and then both sent to our customer for assembly.

The marketing efforts were so successful that the next step was to replace the four-slide with progressive tooling. Then to eliminate the hand assembly at our customer’s facility, we developed a transfer mechanism to stamp and assemble in one press and currently have 5 press cells set up. In 2005 we drop-shipped 93,000,000 assemblies!