Tag Archives: Processes

Six Things I Learned Building a House

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Reprint from American Fastener Journal, September/October 2018

In 2005, my bride of several years and I entered into an adventure and decided that rather than buying an existing home, we would build our first new home together. For many, entering into such a project is likely to test the mettle of their relationship, but my love for building projects made this an easy decision, and thus, I was not intimidated to act as my own General Contractor. So, we hunkered down, began working with an architect friend, and soon had a plan ready to go. Next came the arduous process of finding and hiring subcontractors.

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Strategic Planning: Something Every Progressive Fastener Company Should Be Doing

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Reprint from American Fastener Journal, January/February 2019

Authors Don Peppers and Martha Rogers wrote in their book Extreme Trust: “When your headlights aren’t on, the best rearview mirror isn’t likely to improve your driving.” Although this quote was likely intended to address the idea that past experience isn’t a guarantee for future success, it also speaks to the idea of operating a business without a strategy. If you don’t have a vision and strategy of where you wish the business to go, it is sort of like driving at night without your headlights on.

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What Building a Home Can Teach About Customer Service

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Reprint from American Fastener Journal, July/August 2019

About 12 years ago, my wife and I built the house we currently live in. I acted as the General Contractor. Although for many, this choice turns out to be a disaster, it went reasonably well for me, and in fact, I enjoyed doing it. So it is no surprise that I should find myself once again playing General Contractor in a major construction project.

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A “Galling Development” – What Every Distributor Should Know about Thread Galling

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Reprint from LINK, Spring 2021

A number of year’s back I was engaged by a Midwestern distributor to review an application problem that had intermittently plagued one of their more important customers. Upon meeting with their customer, I learned the problem occurred during the assembly of a stainless steel Nylon insert lock nut to a like stainless steel screw. Although this was a sporadic problem, when it occurred the customer would experience assembly difficulties like nuts that were very hard to turn, nuts that reached installation torque levels before seating, and in the worst cases, nuts that became totally frozen (seized) in mid-run down position, often breaking the screw in torsion.

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A Primer on Fastener Marking

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Reprint from LINK, Summer 2020

A number of years ago I owned an old John Deere tractor that was clearly showing its age. As I tooled around my yard cutting the grass I noticed that the engine was laboring more and more and it was consistently blowing oily blue smoke from the exhaust. I knew it was time to either retire the tractor or rebuild the engine. Although I had never done it before, I decided I would try my hand at rebuilding the engine.

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New Flat Die Thread Rolling Technology

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Reprint from China Fastener World Magazine, Vol. 189

One of the delights of being an independent consultant is the wide assortment of people I meet and projects I get to review. Over the last ten years the two problems that I am most commonly approached about include skills development and thread rolling. In fact, I have written many articles in the last ten years and the one that I most frequently have inquiries about years later is related to problems in thread rolling. This is truly a step in the fastener manufacturing process that is ripe for innovation.

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Thread Rolling Machines

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Reprint from China Fastener World Magazine, Vol. 189

I started my career in the fastener industry between my third and fourth year of university. Although it’s been thirty- four years now, I can remember almost like yesterday the first time I got to walk around a fastener manufacturing plant. Of course we started in the heading department and seeing headers paying off wire and spitting out parts was very exciting, but it was the rolling operation that really left a lasting impression on me.

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Common Problems Faced by Manufacturing in Nut Processing

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Reprint from China Fastener World Magazine, Vol. 188

Nuts, like screws and bolts, are, generally, a high volume commodity. As such, the most predominant method of manufacturing them starts
with cold forming a blank. However, lower volume or large size nuts more often use hot forging or screw machining techniques. For the purposes of this article, we will limit our discussion to the cold forming manufacturing method.

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Multi-station Parts Forming: How Does a Parts Former Differ from a Nut Former?

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Reprint from China Fastener World Magazine, Vol. 187

What do Multi-station Formers Do?
Prior to considering the machine itself, we should first consider what consumers and manufacturers want from these machines. The answer to this question is pretty simple, consumers want quality parts, suited for the intended purpose at a reasonable price and manufacturers want to provide such parts with the most efficient processes or methods available. In other words, as parts become more complex and sophisticated they usually
become more challenging to manufacture. The manufacturer is motivated to remain competitive, and, therefore, must evolve their manufacturing capabilities to be as efficient as possible. Let us consider for example a high volume trimmed hex head part.

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