Hamond Industries Ltd - the Slide Forming Specialists
Slide forming is a highly sophisticated metal stamping process. Slide forming machines are specialized, integrated stamping and forming machines built from the ground up to do complex stampings well. They are suited to smaller parts (smaller than a breadbox, say) rather than larger ones. Within the range they can handle, they offer the following advantages:
- high accuracy
- high repeatability, especially in the face of material variation
- high speed and therefore
- low part price
- low tooling price
Slide forming is especially well suited to parts that require:
- Precise shape and size
- Multiple bends & tabs, especially when the tabs go in different directions
- Bends greater than 90°
- Tapped or threaded holes
- Precise control of burr location and direction
- Control of bend orientation relative to material grain
In certain applications, the following attributes of slide forming become important:
- Economical use of materials
- important for expensive materials
- Modular tooling
- important for "family" parts, because much of the tooling can be shared amongst family members
- High production rates
- our fastest, smallest machines are capable of approximately 30 million small parts per year from a single set of tools. For larger parts, our bigger machines are capable of 20 million parts per year.
Applications that use slide formed parts include (but are not limited to):
- exterior door and window hardware
- industrial shelving (clips to hold the shelves in)
- shelving inside refrigerators (metal clips retain their strength better than plastics at low temperatures)
- mirror clips
- picture clips
- roofing clips
- rebar support clips
- cabinet hardware
- various accessories for bicycles, cars, RVs, SUVs, anywhere you need a fixture or clip that will stand up to use and abuse in a wide range of temperatures
- camping equipment
- farm equipment
- medical equipment
Why does Slide Forming offer these advantages?
Slide forming machines contain, as an integrated solution on one machine bed, several components:
- Straightener
- Feed
- Press
- Cutoff
- Form area with multiple independently timed and powered motions
- Positive ejection
(the picture to the right above shows the form section of one of our machines. Hover your mouse over the picture for a fuller explanation)
Because these components are all:
- mounted to one machine bed
- powered from one synchronized power source
- designed from the beginning to work together
we can achieve significantly higher accuracy and closer timing than most other metal forming processes.
Slide forming machines go under several other names, including four slides, vertislides or multi-slides.
We run slide forming machines made by Torin and U.S. Baird. Torin used to be called Torrington, so early Torin machines may have that name on their boilerplate. Other manufacturers making similar machines include Bihler, Nilsen & OMCG.
See also: Slide Forming Compare and Contrast
For a discussion of slide forming economics, see: I like your Product, but what about the Price?
For another take on Slide forming, see this article from the PMA.
See our gallery of pictures of example slide formed parts