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Custom Manufacturing

Custom Fastener Manufacturing

Standard fasteners are in the catalog. This is the other half: parts made to a drawing, a sample or a sketch, in the shapes and materials a catalog part cannot cover.

Order terms

Minimum order
2,000–5,000 pieces. The exact figure depends on the part: it is set by the tooling the drawing calls for, and is confirmed when the drawing has been reviewed.
Samples
Within 7 days of drawing approval.
Drawing
Preferred, but not required — a sample, photographs or a sketch is enough to start.

What a quotation needs

Nine things, and a drawing settles most of them at once. Where a field is unknown, say so — an assumption stated is better than a blank, and several of these can be recommended rather than specified.

Drawing
A 2D drawing (PDF or DWG) or a 3D model settles almost every other question on this list at once.
Dimensions
Diameter, length, head size and any features — enough to know what is being made.
Tolerance
Tolerance is the single biggest cost driver. Tell us which dimensions are critical and which are not — holding everything tight costs money on features nobody measures.
Material
Carbon steel, alloy steel, stainless, brass, aluminium, titanium — or the application, and we will suggest one.
Strength grade
Property class to ISO 898-1 (8.8, 10.9, 12.9) or stainless class to ISO 3506 (A2-70, A4-80). This decides the material and the heat treatment together.
Thread standard
Metric coarse, metric fine, UNC, UNF, BSW or a pipe thread — and the tolerance class if it is specified.
Surface finish
Zinc, hot-dip galvanised, black oxide, Dacromet, Geomet, nickel, passivation, or plain. Salt-spray hours if you have a requirement.
Quantity
Annual volume and first-order quantity. Volume changes which process is the right one, so it changes the price more than most buyers expect.
Application & environment
What the part holds together, and what it has to survive — temperature, vibration, chemicals, salt. This is what lets us catch a specification that will not work before it is made.

No drawing?

Most replacement parts arrive without one. None of these routes is a problem, and all of them end with a drawing produced for your approval before anything is cut or formed.

A physical sample
The most reliable route. The part is measured, the thread and finish identified, and a drawing produced for your approval before anything is made.
Photographs with a scale
Photographs against a ruler or a caliper, ideally with a thread pitch gauge reading. Enough to identify a standard part or to start a drawing for a non-standard one.
A hand sketch
A sketch with the dimensions that matter is a perfectly good starting point — the drawing gets made from it and comes back to you to check.
The assembly it goes into
Sometimes the fastener is wrong in the first place. If the joint is described rather than the part, a better part can be proposed.

Process range

Which process a part is made by is decided by its shape, its material and its volume — and it is the single biggest influence on the unit price. Each of these explains what it suits and, more usefully, what it does not.

Cold Heading

Cold Forging

Forming a head on a wire blank at room temperature, in one or several blows, with no metal cut away.

Hot Forging

Forming above the recrystallisation temperature, where the metal flows freely and large sections can be shaped in one operation.

Warm Forging

Forming between cold and hot — hot enough to reduce the forming load, cool enough to keep the tolerance.

Thread Rolling

Forming a thread by pressing the blank between hardened dies, displacing metal rather than cutting it.

Thread Turning

Single-Point Threading

Cutting a thread on a lathe with a single-point tool, one pass at a time.

Tapping

Cutting or forming an internal thread in a drilled hole.

Turning

Cutting a rotating workpiece to a diameter on a lathe.

CNC Machining

Cutting to a program rather than to a setting, so the hundredth part matches the first.

Milling

Cutting with a rotating tool against a fixed workpiece — flats, slots, pockets and non-round features.

Drilling

Producing a hole — through, blind, cross-drilled or as the pilot for a thread.

Stamping

Pressing

Cutting and forming sheet metal between a punch and a die, usually in one press stroke per part.

Punching

Shearing a hole or a profile out of sheet with a punch and die.

Drawing

Wire & Deep Drawing

Pulling material through a die to reduce its diameter, or a blank into a die to form a cup.

Cutting & Shearing

Cutting bar, wire, tube or sheet to length before anything else happens to it.

Grinding

Removing a small amount of material with an abrasive wheel, for tolerance and surface finish.

Centerless Grinding

Grinding a diameter with the part supported on a blade between two wheels, with no centres and no chuck.

Knurling

Rolling a pattern into a surface to make it grip — either a hand or an anchoring surface.

Broaching & Serration

Pushing or pulling a toothed tool through or across the work, each tooth cutting a little deeper than the last.

Etching

Removing or marking metal chemically rather than mechanically.

EDM

Electrical Discharge Machining

Eroding metal with controlled electrical sparks, with no cutting force at all.

Parts made to order

Every family in the catalog can be made non-standard. These pages carry the standards already catalogued in each, the processes that produce them, and what changes when the part is special.

Questions

What is the minimum order quantity for a custom part?

Between 2,000 and 5,000 pieces for most parts. The exact figure depends on the part: it is set by the tooling the drawing calls for, and is confirmed when the drawing has been reviewed.

How long does a sample take?

Within 7 days once the drawing has been approved. The drawing stage comes first, and for a part being reverse-engineered from a sample it is where most of the time goes.

Can you make a part without a drawing?

Yes. A physical sample, photographs against a scale, or a dimensioned sketch are all workable starting points. A drawing is produced from whichever of those you have and sent back for approval before anything is made.

Send the part

A drawing answers most of this at once. If you do not have one, fill in what you know and attach a photograph — samples follow within 7 days of the drawing being approved.

A 2D drawing (PDF or DWG) or a 3D model settles almost every other question on this list at once.
Diameter, length, head size and any features — enough to know what is being made.
Tolerance is the single biggest cost driver. Tell us which dimensions are critical and which are not — holding everything tight costs money on features nobody measures.
Carbon steel, alloy steel, stainless, brass, aluminium, titanium — or the application, and we will suggest one.
Property class to ISO 898-1 (8.8, 10.9, 12.9) or stainless class to ISO 3506 (A2-70, A4-80). This decides the material and the heat treatment together.
Metric coarse, metric fine, UNC, UNF, BSW or a pipe thread — and the tolerance class if it is specified.
Zinc, hot-dip galvanised, black oxide, Dacromet, Geomet, nickel, passivation, or plain. Salt-spray hours if you have a requirement.
Annual volume and first-order quantity. Volume changes which process is the right one, so it changes the price more than most buyers expect.
What the part holds together, and what it has to survive — temperature, vibration, chemicals, salt. This is what lets us catch a specification that will not work before it is made.
Solve the arithmetic shown in the image.