From the Wire Coil Straight
to 300-mm-Long Full-Thread
Screws of 10-mm-Diameter
– all in One Machine
Cold forming achieves record-breaking throughput
A new all-in-one machine from Amba produces
full-thread screws of 300 mm length and an
outside diameter of 10 mm directly from the
coiled wire. While in the screwmaking industry,
typically 30 to 40 threads are rolled per minute
– this does not include the forming of the screw
head – , the new machine achieves a rate of
more 100 screws per minute – including the
screw head!
The machine designed for the production of full-
thread screws used in structural timber design is
almost ready to be shipped to a customer in Germany.
It is the world’s first machine to produce screws of
this length and diameter from the coiled wire to the
finished product in just one continuous cycle.
The machine works according to the Amba-developed
all-in-one principle, i.e. all process steps from paying
off, cutting-to-length and straightening the wire,
forming the head to thread rolling are performed by
one machine.
The new all-in-one machine produces more than
100 up to 300-mm-long screws per minute in one
continuous cycle.
Currently, Amba achieves a production rate of more
than 100 screws per minute, i.e. three times more
than common machines on the market, which only
roll the plain threads.
The recipe: Cold forming instead of machining
The new machine is exemplary of a current trend:
In the manufacture of long metal components
with varying cross-sections along their length, cold
forming has been taken over from machining.
Manfred Houben, one of the three Managing
Directors of Amba, explains this trend: “Cold forming
processes achieve much higher throughput rates than
8
WIRE NEWS March 2019
Manfred Houben (left) and Lars Henning, both
Managing Directors at Amba, are inspecting one of
the 300-mm-long screws.
machining operations because the items do not have
to be individually fed, clamped, machined and ejected.
In this way, discontinuous manufacturing becomes
a quasi-continuous process. In certain applications
this may result in a productivity improvement of
one order of magnitude.“ The all-in-one principle is