COLD FORGED

Cold forged fasteners volumes heading forge headed

Production cold forging is the process used by the worlds volume manufacturers of Bolts, Screws and general fasteners.

Small Batch cold forging is a process that takes place where the manufacturer is more interested in profit and not the number of fasteners produced.

These companies meet the demand for low volume manufacturing runs.


Cold heading is basically putting metal in a die and hammering it and is different to hot forging where the metal is heated before (hammering) forming. Cold heading and other methods of cold forming cause the metal to deform at room temperature.

Modern cold-forming machines, also called headers or parts formers, provide from one to seven die stations, opposite a similar number of punches mounted on a slide, which frequently moves horizontally. The method used for making bolts or screws is the one-die, two-blow header. This has one die, which is the diameter of the shank of the bolt or screw being formed. The material in the die is struck with two different punches, one after the other. There is a limit to how much you can deform the metal with a single blow; two or more hits are necessary to create the correct shape of the bolt head.

Upsetting, another term for heading includes forming a bulge in a cylindrical part, as well as forming a head on one end. Using sophisticated tooling can producing combinations of upsetting and extrusion when the punch hits each station, a cold forming machine can produce complex parts with dimensional tolerances and surface finishes rivalling those achieved with machining; and at the rate of many hundreds per minute. Cold-formed parts exhibit excellent strength, as the material flows into its final form, rather than being cut by machining.