1994 FIN – Two Domestic Fastener Wire Producers Plan Improvements
February 28, 1994 FIN –Two domestic producers of wire used for fastener fabrication are moving forward with plans to supply the industry with state-of-the-art products. The two are Carpenter Technology Corp (CarTech), of Reading, Pennsylvania and Cuyahoga Steel & Wire, Solon, Ohio, a joint venture between Cuyahoga Steel & Wire, Inc. and Japan’s Nissho Iwai American Corp.
CarTech on February 10, 1994 announced plans to invest more than $20 million in a two-year program to streamline and expand its production facilities.
The company, already into several segments of the program, says it plans to strengthen CarTech’s position as “the leading U.S. manufacturer of stainless steel high temperature alloy wire for fasteners.” Key to the plan is the conversion from batch type manufacture to more efficient cell production technology, which will permit the performance of multiple manufacturing steps in one continuous process.
Driving the modernization program, says CarTech is an interdisciplinary task force of marketing, manufacturing, engineering and technical specialists who have been assessing user needs and investigating technology requirements for more than a year.
Members of the CarTech task force traveled worldwide to observe production equipment in operation and also visited major wire users to determine how CarTech could better align its production capabilities to dovetail more closely with wire fabrication operations.
The company expects to make numerous changes in conventional designs and processes, and advances in several existing technologies. New production cells being installed in the mill will perform all the operations, in natural sequence, needed to convert stainless steel and high temperature alloy rods to full-finished wire. For example, strand annealing incorporates in-line functions such as degreasing, pre-coating, drawing and laser gauge testing.
The company already has installed and started up new bright strand annealing equipment, a new multi-hole draw block and new inverted drawing equipment. The major part of the company’s wire modernization program is to be completed by mid-1995.
CarTech, founded in 1889, produces billet, bar, rod, wire, narrow strip, special shapes and hollow forms in many sizes and finishes in over 450 grades of steel. The company operates a wire mill in Orangeburg, South Carolina.
Cuyahoga Steel & Wire, Inc., which back in late 1992 announced the formation of a $20 million joint venture, to build “the world’s most modern cold heading quality steel wire processing facility”, has targeted March 1995 as start up date for the new venture, called Cuyahoga Steel & Wire.
The Cuyahoga Steel & Wire 102,000 sq. ft. facility, which is being constructed near Cuyahoga Steel & Wire, Inc.’s present cold- finished bar and wire drawing plant in Solon, Ohio, will increase Cuyahoga’s annealing and drawing capacity tenfold. The existing mill’s annual capacity is now about 65,000 tons. George Goodel, who’s a top executive with Cuyahoga Steel & Wire, Inc., is chief operating officer of the joint venture. ©1992/2011 Fastener Industry News
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