Made in Stanly Spring 2020 | Page 6

Helping Hold the Community Together: Stanley Engineered Fastening Story by Chris Miller | Photos by Marty Bowers W hat do cars, school buses, tractor trailers, farm equipment, solar panels, snow mobiles and baby car seats have in common? The materials of each of these are literally held together by rivets, which are permanent mechanical fasteners. And many of the world’s rivets are produced by Stanley Engineered Fastening, which has a plant in Stanfield. The 90,000-square-foot location employs more than 90 people. “The parts that we make hold things together,” Human Resources and Environmental Health and Safety Manager Lindsey Toole said. Stanley Engineered Fastening is a global company with 37 plants around the world including 15 in North America. The Stanfield location manufactures Avdel brand product, which makes an assortment of rivets, lock bolts and engineered fasteners. Stanley Engineered Fastening is one of 20 brands that make up the parent company, Stanley Black & Decker, a Fortune 500 American manufacturer of industrial tools, household hardware and provider of security locks and products. The facility has produced blind fasteners since 1995, though under the ownership of many different companies. It was initially Avdel Cherry Textron, followed by Acument Global Technologies and Infastech before becoming Stanley Engineered in 2013. The Stanfield location specifically manufactures blind fasteners. Blind fasteners are rivets that can be completely installed from one side of multiple application materials, unlike nuts and bolts which require access to both sides of material. 6 Made in Stanly Magazine | 2020 The blind fasteners are comprised of the mandrel, or stem, and the body, or shell. The company manufactures 725 finished goods and 1,600 purchased and sellable parts. Each blind rivet can be made of stainless steel, regular steel and aluminum wires and has 150 variations of different sizes and compositions. The company receives spools of wire and feeds them into a header machine which creates the stems and shells. The two components are then placed into an assembly machine and melded together for the final product. Stanley Engineered Fastening, Stanfield Operations, which utilizes three shifts per day, currently manufactures between