Global Fastener News

By Dick Callahan

February 17, 1983 FIN – The U.S. fastener manufacturing sector continues to contract.
Latest companies to announce plant closings are Eaton Corp., which said it is shutting down its Cleveland plant, and AMCA International Corp., which is closing fastener plants in Bedford, MA, and Chicago.

The plant Eaton is closing has quite a long history. Here, from FIN files, are some details about it, along with information on some of Eaton’s other fastener activities.
Eaton Corp’s. Engineered Fastener Operation is the result of Eaton’s bringing together four of its subsidiaries in 1972.

The Cleveland Division, formerly Tinnerman Products Inc., merged with Eaton in 1969.
Tinnerman began as a hardware manufacturer in Cleveland in 1870 and got into the stove and range manufacturing business about the turn of the century.
After inventing the speed nut fastener in 1923 it got into the fastener business. By 1939 Tinnerman was producing fasteners exclusively and was a major supplier of aircraft fasteners and clamps during World War II.

• Eaton’s Massillon (Ohio) Division had been a supplier of Reliance Snap Rings and various nut, bolt and screw products since 1931. It was heavy into automotive and railroad Industries as well as powerline hardware, and served a broad spectrum of OEMs with a line of cold headed fasteners. It merged with Eaton in 1931.
• The Troy plant in Whippany, NJ, was founded in the early 1950s and specialized in high volume, precision requirements for the post war electro-mechanical industry. The major line consisted of miniature and sub-miniature stampings in beryllium and exotic metals. It merged with Eaton in 1970.
• Eaton Yale Ltd. of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, was launched in 1947 as an adjunct to the Tinnerman organization, but was separately owned and operated.
The company expanded rapidly during the 1950’s and had become a major supplier to the U.S. automotive industry by the early 1960s. Tinnerman acquired the company in the mid 1960s prior to Tinnerman’s merger with Eaton in 1969.

Eaton normally employs about 800 people in its fastener operations and the product line consists primarily of industrial fasteners (spring steel, plastic, cold headed and cold formed) and precision stampings. There are licensees in England, France, Spain and Australia.
Major Warehousing for the Engineered Fastener products are in Cleveland and the Wire & Fasteners Product Division has a warehouse in Massillon.

AMCA

The Continental Screw plant that AMCA is closing in New Bedford, MA, employs about 100 people and produces threaded and non-threaded fasteners for the automotive and appliance industries.
Production of fasteners from there and the Chicago plant will be consolidated at Park Forest, IL.