Nylon is a family of chemical, heat, and wear-resistant materials that are frequently used in diverse industry applications including aerospace and military, automotive, construction, marine, plumbing, and healthcare. For Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), nylon’s versatile properties and durability make nylon washers excellent replacements for standard metallic washers. The two most popular methods to source and create nylon washers are non-metallic stamping and injection molding.
Non-metallic stamping has emerged as a high quality, low cost alternative to popular injection molding. Utilizing conventional or high speed punch presses and a combination of dies, the non-metallic stamping process can cut sheets of plastic and other thin non-metallic substances at incredibly high speeds.
Some specific benefits of compound die nylon stamping include:
- Accuracy – Nylon stamping or punching provides high speed, accurate mass production of identical parts.
- Uniformity – The punching process blanks an entire set of parts in one operation, creating uniformity with little to no visible irregularities. These types of abnormalities can often occur with multiple individual injection molding operations.
- Faster turnaround – Some high-speed punch presses offer a production volume of as many as 400 strokes per minute. Non-metallic stamping or punching can create up to 200,000 nylon washers per day, while injection molding makes closer to only 25,000-30,000 per day.
Above all else, stamping nylon washers is cost-effective.
The rapid fire process can punch sheets and coils in a short period of time and create less expensive orders compared to injection molding, which can require new molds for each part. The ability to simply adjust existing punch presses also keeps tooling costs down and enables quick turnaround, leading to more fulfilled orders over time.
At New Process Fibre (NPF), we have a large array of punch presses ranging from 14 high speed presses to 62 hydraulic presses with capacities of 2 to 70 tons and a huge inventory of die-sets for non-metallic stamping. NPF is a family-owned company with almost 100 years of experience improving the in-house manufacturing process. To learn more about our nylon washers, please visit this page. For more information on how to select the best material for your next job, download our free materials selection guide.
