Hamond Times

Hamond has, for years, had the ability to put one accurate tapped hole into a formed part manufactured on their slide forming machines. While this slighly increases the cost of the formed part, the incremental cost is vastly lower then the cost of an operator on a separate tapping machine. In addition, the quality of the resulting threads (locational accuracy, perpendicularity, thread completeness, thread hardness) are all vastly superior to separate operator-actuated tapping machine.

Hamond has in the last year acquired the facilities to double tap parts. That is, a part needing two identical threaded or tapped holes can be automatically tapped as easily as parts needing only one threaded hole. The incremental cost is low - the incremental cost of the second hole is generally less than half the incremental cost of the first one, which is itself quite low.

In addition, responding to customer requirements, Hamond has developed 2 additional abilities:
1. to tap after forming
2. to tap through 2 material layers

The ability to tap after forming allows us to tap very close to a material fold or other stretch feature without endangering the thread quality or circularity. This capability, which is only available for certain shapes and by pre-arrangement at design time, allows us to eject the part from the main forming area of the machine while retaining accurate part registration. This allows us to tap the part after forming but still on the machine, still synchronous, still in accurate registration, and therefore allows us to make the same high quality tapped hole as when we tap the strip before forming.

The ability to tap through 2 material layers allows us to make one thread that is continuous through two material layers. This allows the part designer the freedom to double material in some areas for extra strength, and still have a tapped hole feature in that area.

For our "tour de force", there is one job where we combine all three facilities - double tapping, tapping after forming, and tapping through doubled material.

We would be happy to quote on your drawings of parts needing these facilities and, if necessary, suggest engineering changes to make the part amenable to these new process capabilities. Our Sales Manager, John Sheehy, will be happy to assist you. You can reach him at our main phone number (905) 761-9094 or by email as john.sheehy@hamond.com

We have machine availability on both our big and small machines scattered through February and March. This means that, unlike the period up to the end of January, when our machines were full, we can generally accomodate new short-warning orders.

Of course, in this business, this could change at any time.

As always, you can consult our salesman John for more detailed information. Call him at 416-998-0212

Copper prices continue to rise. The issues surrounding the Chinese trader who was speculating on Copper seem to have been resolved, but that didn't solve the copper price rise.

You can see what has happened to copper prices over the last year and the last 5 years by looking at these charts (provided by kitco). The charts are clickable and will take you to the kitco web site.





Larger (fills your screen) versions of these 2 charts here: 1 year and 5 year.

Obviously, this tremendous growth in Copper base metal price has effected all Copper derivitive alloys, including Brass and Beryllium Copper.