Fastenal Rockford Illinois plant tour

Tom recommends the video tour of Fastenal's plant as documentation of optimized 70-year fastener manufacturing.

The only other cold heading plant I've been through was supplying steering gears for General Motors. These were parts, some of which weighed five or ten pounds, and some of those were warm headed. They'd heat them up to three or four hundred degrees, because to try to do them cold — you wouldn't want to touch one of those when it came out of the machine, friction had made it hotter. But it was the ability to lubricate that surface that allowed them to start cold heading machines. All the nails you've ever seen and most of the screws — if you go to Google, you'll find a company called Fastenal in Rockford, Illinois, and they take you on a video tour of their plant, very good tour. You're going to make those parts by additive manufacturing? No, I don't think so. That's been optimized over 70 years. That's called heading.