Composite fastening applications challenges at Advanced Engineering

With a full complement of bigHead design engineers on hand to discuss new or existing applications, the emphasis will be firmly on providing engineering solutions where innovative form and function and associated production costs are not compromised or restricted by component fastening.

bigHead’s sales and technical teams will demonstrate the UK manufacturer’s passion for solving customer’s challenges by close collaboration from the very first ideas through to prototyping, production and beyond - creating, optimising and refining composite component design as a partnership.

In the past year bighead has successfully secured a KTP funded project with Cranfield University’s Composites Centre for developing fastening solutions for high-volume manufacture of lightweight composite components for the automotive industry. The project is now well underway and visitors to Advanced Engineering 2016 can explore new assembly techniques to precision-fix bigHeads using specialist dry adhesives that can be scaled from small quantities to fully automated high-volume production. Of course bigHeads can be surface bonded using other agents or directly embedded in components and panels using injection or SMC moulding processes, and all these technologies will be covered at the exhibition.

As bigHead celebrates its 50^th year and is undoubtedly the worlds most recognised discrete bonding fastener, visitors to the show can also discover how bigHeads have evolved as a truly enabling component. From its beginnings as the original fastening solution for discrete thin-panel and composite fixing, with its distinctive flat perforated head design with numerous fixing options, the design versatility of the bigHead has migrated beyond its original concept - tracking advances in materials technology and offering innovative fastening solutions that can be applied to countless manufacturing techniques.