Since 1942, Heroslam is expert in the design and manufacturing of thread rolling tools for the production of fasteners and threaded parts primarily geared toward the automotive, aerospace, energy and nail industries.
Easy Engineering: What are the main areas of activity of the company?
HEROSLAM: With more than 75 years of experience, we design and manufacture high performance thread rolling tools of exceptional quality and precision, and a complete range of dies including flat, planetary, and cylindrical thread rolling dies.
E.E: What’s the news for 2021 about new products?
HEROSLAM: We are constantly innovating and improving the quality and durability of our tools. We design customized thread rolling solutions as per the needs of our customer base. On this regard, the number of new products and new tools we design and produce every year is very significant.
E.E: What are the ranges of products?
HEROSLAM: We are one of the few threads rolling tool manufacturers that produce the complete range of thread rolling tools, including flat, cylindrical and planetary dies.
We offer first class thread rolling solutions in terms of quality, precision and tool life, reducing non-quality costs, avoiding re-work operations, and carrying out fewer machine preps and changes, minimizing machine down time. Additionally, we offer our customers all our experience and know-how in thread rolling processes to assist them in selecting the tools that best suit their specific needs.
E.E: At what stage is the market where you are currently active?
HEROSLAM: The situation of the fastener industry, as many others, has been strongly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the situation of the different players varies depending on the industry sector they are oriented to. The aerospace industry is going through a serious crisis and the expected recovery is still uncertain. On the other hand, companies within the automotive fastener industry are seeing their production levels increasing during the last few months. In any case, at this stage, it is difficult to predict how the market will evolve in the near future.
E.E: What can you tell us about market trends?
HEROSLAM: The fastener industry follows the trends of the industries it serves. In the automotive and aerospace industries we are seeing a clear transition to more environmentally friendly vehicles and this has a significant impact in the type of fasteners that are used in these industries. One of the main demands from OEMs is to reduce the weight of the vehicles they produce and taking into account the big number of fasteners that you can find in a car or a plane, the weight reduction of fasteners is important to them. Fastener manufacturers are investing a lot in reducing the weight of their products while maintaining their mechanical properties. In order to achieve that, they are redesigning their products and using lighter and harder materials.
For Heroslam, as suppliers of customized thread rolling solutions, our challenge is to design new tools made with different types of steel combined with special heat treatments and coatings to help our customers in this transition by supplying them with high performance thread rolling tools that can thread roll hard parts with a reasonable tool life. On this regard, we are increasing our investment efforts in R&D activities to implement new materials and coatings in order to increase tool life when rolling hard parts.
E.E: What are the most innovative products marketed?
HEROSLAM: We are focused in increasing the durability of our thread rolling tools to offer our customers the most competitive thread rolling solutions in the market. On this regard, coatings play an important role and we are constantly looking for special coatings that can make our tools live longer.
Our well known GG coating is a good example. It is a special coating that we have developed internally with the support of a few selected customers. We can proudly say that Heroslam’s GG coating extends tool life when rolling hard parts in an average of 30%. Today, this in-house coating is applied to more than 50% of the tools we produce.
E.E: What estimations do you have for 2021?
HEROSLAM: We are optimistic about the evolution of the pandemic, which is a key factor when it comes to making predictions. However, we are cautious and we see it difficult to predict how 2021 will be. So far, the start of the year has been very positive for Heroslam and we hope to maintain our activity at similar levels throughout the whole year.