Fastener makers increase margins and quality control thanks to RAD-CON's bell furnaces

The February/March edition of Fastener Technology International features an article about RAD-CON, containing a success story about how the company's bell furnaces can drastically improve quality of the finished products, with ROI in short times.

Over the past decade, more and more fastener manufacturers have pulled in spheroidize annealing as a core process to profitable fastener manufacturing.
Advancements to spheroidize annealing process control have allowed ever smaller fastener companies to justify bringing this critical step in-house, realizing not only savings on the outside processing cost, but also returning benefits to their downstream processes.

The Business Case

For the medium-sized fastener manufacturer (less than 1000 tons per month), economics dictate strong consideration to bringing the spheroidize annealing process in-house.
Such companies are paying a premium over raw hot-rolled wire rod of around US$150/ton or US$1,800,000/year for the 1000 ton per month producer. Considering all-in running costs of utilities and labor are ~US$30/ton using today’s latest annealing technology, an ROI can be achieved typically in less than two years for even the smallest of the medium-sized fastener makers.

Want to read more? Click here to download the full article in pdf format (source: Fastener Technology International).