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Expounding on Exports – The New Haven Manufacturers Association (NHMA) held its annual dinner meeting last night in … http://ow.ly/1kFK27
Bead Electronics was granted US patent no. 8,087,281 B2 on January 3rd for its innovative True Grip interconnect pin. Bead’s True Grip pin is a hybrid design that combines the strength and reliability of through hole interconnects with the ease of surface mount processing.
Cross section of a True Grip pin solder jointBead’s design is the first end-to-end pin produced with a wide flange that can be automatically inserted into printed circuit boards. The wide flange provides a defined seating plane for insertion depth control, a robust shoulder for seating the pin without distorting it, and a large surface area for soldering.
To read the full press release, click here.
To watch a video about the True Grip pin, click here.
An electronics manufacturer can have an enviable customer list, a world class facility, and dynamite products; but if it doesn’t have the right people in the right places, it can be in real trouble.
Employees can make or break a company. Lee Iacocca once said, “I hire people brighter than me and then I get out of their way.” This is terrific advice. You want to lose a valuable employee? Micro-manage them in what you’ve hired them to do.
Bead is very fortunate to have bright and dedicated workers. Some have been here for decades, some just hired at the beginning of the year. They are self-starters, hard working and committed. They know that the customer’s expectations must be exceeded in order to retain their business. And it’s important they have “skin in the game” which is why we have profit sharing for everyone: the better we do, the better they do.
We try desperately not to hire too quickly, especially when business spikes. Hiring the wrong person can be time consuming, costly and disruptive to the organization. Good workers will always see those who don’t pull their weight, and it can become a disincentive for them. That’s why it’s vital that only “A” players are on the bus; no matter how difficult or heart wrenching, you must remove and leave the others behind.
As a family business, Bead provides opportunities for skilled family members…only if they have prior work experience and there is a position open in their area of expertise. Expectations are higher for family members, and many times the demands are greater. But one of the most gratifying feelings is when you realize that those family members are really “A” players, too. And there is always room on the bus for “A” employees.
Today, business leaders must rely heavily on gut instincts to continue manufacturing in today’s uncertain environment.
Our niche of cold metal forming, or swaging, is doing very well. Our electronics customers, whether in telecommunication, automotive or PCB markets, continue to order at robust levels. Plumbing and chain sales are very strong and routinely exceed budget. But if you read the paper or tune in to the nightly news, you would swear your business should be shut down tomorrow.
Unemployment remains high, but our little companies have added conscientious workers to our teams. We’ve hired, not because of government incentives, but because we need the added skills. We’re uncertain of the effects of ObamaCare and the impending regulations of Dodd-Frank, but we continue to work hard because our customers are counting on us.
There seems to be trouble and conflict around the world, but that doesn’t appear to impact the growing percentage of our exports. Though growth is slow at home, emerging countries are gobbling up consumer goods at breakneck speeds. We shouldn’t feel threatened by the impending Free Trade agreements; we should look at them as opportunities to help us back on our feet.
Nature works in cycles. The U.S. is in a tough cycle now, but this too shall pass. Let’s look at each day as a glass half full and not let the constant media negativity deprive us of the joy of life. No matter the circumstances, there is always good.
Regardless of your industry, business or profession a good website is crucial. It used to be the sign hanging outside the old shop shaped like the product sold inside. Then the advertisement in the Yellow Pages was the answer. Today, if you aren’t represented by a great website, you aren’t even in the game.
Putting together a great site takes partnering with a terrific web designer and spending many hours creating the all-important portal into your company. We are fortunate to have young people in our organization who have grown up with the computer and Internet. They’ve been key in building our site and, more importantly, monitoring the site’s traffic through Google Analytics. ”If you can’t measure it, you can’t fix it.”
I was having dinner with a new prospective customer the other evening. I was prepared for the meeting because I had been on their website and knew their history, products and recent news. I was not surprised that they had visited our site, but I was stunned to learn that they actually formed a committee to review our expertise, capabilities and viability completely through our website. That review resulted in their flying half way across the country to meet us in person, meet with our engineers and quality folks and view our factory. As it turns out, we are a good fit for each other and a business relationship is developing. Had we had a poor presence on the Internet, we would most likely have been eliminated as a potential supplier for interconnect pins. Even in such a niche market as swaging, our website is our international rep.
First impressions are vital both personally and in business. A great web presence is usually that first impression…and you must impress. The site is a true reflection of your business. Creating a great website is not easy or cheap; it takes time, thought, creativity and money. The upside is that a company can re-brand itself, create new logos or a new, more modern tag line while working on their website. These can all be re-purposed for business cards, promotional material and trade shows.
Last December Bead completed the acquisition of Auto-Swage’s tubular and square wire swaging business. During a particularly snowy January, Auto-Swage machinery was loaded onto flatbed trucks and hauled to the rigger’s facility for cleaning and then to Bead. Making room on our shop floor for the “new” machinery was challenging but also an opportunity for creating a much better work flow.
Bead and Auto-Swage shared many customers. When business was poor, the two companies waged price wars to secure business. The customer was the winner. Bead has added new customers as well, most of whom have been visited and shown the advantages of Bead’s products and customer service.
Bead has developed and modified its proprietary swaging presses since 1914; Auto-Swage designed and built their presses in the 1940’s. Over the years there was quite a bit of cross-pollination between the two companies. At one point, an Auto-Swage engineer became a Bead President, leaving his mark on the technology of both enterprises. Now we have the enviable position of housing both press technologies under one roof with a serious program of “best practices” underway.
Acquisitions are integral stages in a company’s growth. But when an acquisition fits as snugly in an operation such as ours, it’s a home run.
Bead Industries, Inc announced the purchase of the assets of Autoswage Products’ tubular and square wire swaging operation on Thursday December 30, 2010. The acquisition will become part of the corporation’s Bead Electronics Division based in Milford, CT. “This acquisition strengthens Bead’s position in the very competitive electronics interconnect market”, Mr. Bryant said.
Bead is the leading manufacturer of swaged tubular, solid wire and continuous reeled interconnect pins for the automotive, telecom, connector, data and lighting industries. Ron Andreoli, President of Bead Electronics said, “The acquisition of these product lines expands our current swaging business, provides additional complementary technology and supplements Bead’s organic growth strategy focused on new products and enhanced marketing. The integration is going smoothly and all orders will ship as scheduled. Our new customers can expect the innovative products and excellent customer service Bead Electronics is known for.”
Click here to read the original press release.
Bead’s adoption of 100% Vision System inspection was recently featured in Vision and Sensors Magazine. Below is an excerpt of the article:
The Intricacies of Electronics Inspection
Electronics inspection applications typically involve automated optical inspection (AOI) at multiple manufacturing stages. The trend is toward more points of inspection, but the key is always to capture yield-limiting defects—and avoid false positives—while reducing the overall time for inspection.
As components shrink, inspection systems need to provide ever-greater resolution while maintaining an ever-increasing total system throughput—thus the need for speed. Higher speed requires higher sensitivity to make up for the reduced number of photons. Delivering better images in less time with less light presents conflicting goals, but these are the goals inspection systems must meet.
Machine Vision Tackles Tight Tolerances
Several years ago, Bead Industries collaborated with a large automotive electronic manufacturing supplier in the Midwest to develop a high-performance interconnect pin for use in automotive actuator control systems. An actuator is a mechanical device for moving or controlling a mechanism or system. In this case, the pins are used in electronic circuits for temperature controls in cars and trucks. Bead’s True Grip Tandem Pin with its unique flanged design offers rigidity, alignment and electrical conductivity while requiring less solder.
Bead’s challenge was to ensure that each of the tens of millions of pins produced on several different machines precisely met all of the specifications. Each pin measures approximately 0.04 inch in diameter by 0.472 inch long. They are manufactured tip-to-tail in a continuous chain, taken up onto a large reel and shipped directly to customers. This process limited Bead’s options for performing quality inspections.
Manual inspection at periodic intervals was effective but impractical as volume requirements increased. While Bead’s customer did not require 100% inspection, Plant Manager Kevin Mayer says, “An in-process, high-speed vision inspection system that could measure multiple dimensions on every pin and store the data was the only way to achieve total confidence in our process and product.”
Inspection data collected from the Dalsa machine vision system
Click here to read the full article.
Bead Industries has been using the cold metal forming process, known as swaging, for over 96 years. From the old French word for blacksmith or forging, swaging is a type of stamping operation using a progressive die. Flat metal strip moves through a draw die and is formed into a seamed tube, then enters a die with a number of cavities that progressively forms the pin into a finished product. As the pin is formed it osculates 90° with every strike, similar to making a snowball. The process of swaging produces extremely uniform parts as there is no where for the metal to flow but within the confines of each cavity, so pin features occur at the exact same location piece after piece. What’s more, there is virtually no scrap in the process: 50 pounds of metal enter the process and 50 pounds of parts exit the process.
When compared to other cold-forming processes, swaging has the best of both worlds: it’s almost half the price of screw machined parts but can achieve much greater uniformity and more diverse geometries than stamped parts. Though scrap is inherent in both screw machining and stamping, scrap is virtually non-existent during swaging.
Bead Electronics swages many varieties of tubular and solid wire pins. Through the swaging process, Bead can produces collars, ears, knurls, and other retention devices as well as offset pins. Our new patent pending True Grip Pin is the first continuous-reeled pin with a collar making it a hybrid through hole and surface mount pin designed for automatic insertion.
It is truly amazing that Bead is able to forge its way to the future using a process designed at the beginning of the last century.
Bead Electronics launched a new website, www.beadelectronics.com, dedicated to providing engineers and purchasing agents with an online resource for innovative, cost-effective and custom interconnect pins.
The site’s homepage welcomes visitors with bold new colors, a clean, uncluttered design, and ease of navigation throughout the site. New features include: in-depth product details and images, a “featured product” video, direct access to product specifications and white papers, and streamlined search and usability.
Click here to read the full press release.
The Family Jewels Are Nickel-Plated Steel 