How to Accelerate Custom Fastener Development with Rapid Prototyping

With a typical lead-time of up to 18 weeks for the development and production of a new or bespoke fastener, STANLEY^® Engineered Fastening's rapid prototyping service can cut this time in half (usually 8 weeks) for many of our most popular Avdel^® and POP^® fasteners, allowing engineers to prove a design before going to full production — saving time and costs associated with a production run of new, untested fasteners. 

When you design a product that requires customized fasteners, STANLEY Engineered Fastening brings the innovation that allows our customers to meet the demands of the modern world, while overcoming complex engineering and operational challenges.

What is Fastener Rapid Prototyping?

Rapid prototyping provides a cost-effective means of quickly testing production quality samples, enabling real-world decisions to be made before mass production. Due to our extraordinarily broad product portfolio, we often have products immediately available to perform the first functional builds within a few days. "These preliminary tests often result in only minor, i.e. quickly feasible adjustments to the fastener," says Stefan Schneider, Director, Global Product Line Management-Automotive/Blind Fastening. "We never start from scratch." We stock blanks in a wide variety of styles and sizes that can be customized depending on your needs. In addition to our large inventory of options, we have the ability to design customized fasteners just in case your project ends up needing something more precise.

STANLEY Engineered Fastening is the market-leading manufacturer of custom fastening solutions for a wide range of fastening applications, providing custom solutions for aerospace, automotive, ground transportation, mining & agriculture, defense, electronics, and other industries. Our application teams possess decades of experience, so we have immense know-how that we can access in each individual case. "Our experts can also provide on-site support. We will be happy to assess the application and the manufacturing process and to discuss wishes and challenges together with you. That is how we reduce the time for solution-finding considerably." says Schneider.

Specially sourced metals are machined and processed to provide prototype parts with placing characteristics almost identical to the final mass-produced fasteners. We have a network of specialist external machining and processing sources who are able to quickly deliver us quality prototype parts direct from our CAD files.

—Angus SeewrajDirector of Engineering, STANLEY® Engineered Fastening

Rapid prototyping features and benefits

• Customized geometries
• Non-standard sizes
• Sealing beads
• Washers
• Alternative coatings
• Surface finishes

We can also provide additional fastener features such as under-head sealing beads or washers for enhanced leak resistance, alternative coatings for better corrosion resistance, painting and other surface finishes for color-matching, or special head marking for specific identification purposes. We have state of the art CNC machine tools that allow us to produce a wide range of fasteners from our expansive product portfolio in small sample batch quantities.

"Rapid Prototyping has become an integral part of our product development process, providing production-quality fastener samples to our customers. We rely on CNC machinery to dramatically reduce lead times, improving customer satisfaction and win rates," states Director of Engineering Angus Seewraj. "Specially sourced metals are machined and processed to provide prototype parts with placing characteristics almost identical to the final mass-produced fasteners. We have a network of specialist external machining and processing sources who are able to quickly deliver us quality prototype parts direct from our CAD files.”

Our extraordinarily broad product portfolio, our decades of experience, our on-site support and fastener simulation... this is how we reduce R&D time and effort for our customers. —Stefan Schneider Director, Global Product Line Management, Automotive/Blind Fastening, STANLEY® Engineered Fastening

Our application engineers will work with you to understand your requirements and deliver bespoke prototyped samples that meet your needs and allow you to progress your application solution faster. Our highly skilled prototype engineering teams use state of the art CNC equipment in order to deliver production-representative, high-quality prototype samples without the costs associated with heading and rolling tooling plus production volumes.

Our rapid prototyping service is focused on producing customized geometries to meet your specific application and can provide fastening solutions to many industry challenges. Contact us today to see how small volume, quick turnaround samples can save you development time and budget.