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It can be a lot of fun to browse through a physical catalog, turning pages to look for products as you sip coffee. But you don’t have that kind of time. When you need a fastener, rivet, or some other hardware that is critical to your assembly, you need it yesterday and in great quantities. Otherwise, production at your facility stops and your goods do not reach the customer on time.

To make searching for our products, ordering them, and receiving them easier, more efficient, and more cost-effective, Bossard has developed an e-commerce site. You can access the site on any desktop, laptop, tablet, or smartphone wherever you are if you have an Internet connection.

You can begin your search by choosing from large categories or manufacturers and then refining your choice into smaller categories before you reach the main catalog page. You can then page through or filter the available products and either click on a specific item for more information or enter the number of items you want and add them to the shopping cart. When you’re ready to check out, click the Shopping Cart icon in the upper right and enter your delivery details as well as payment information.

If you need more information or have a question, you have two ways to contact us.

• If you need an answer now, use the Welcome to LiveChat window to type a message. A live support agent can respond immediately.
• If you’d rather look at the answer later, you can also leave us an email message and we’ll respond in kind. This method does require that you leave more details about who you are such as your name, email address, company, location, and phone number. This lets us know who you are, so we can tailor our response more accurately.

For questions or more information about Bossard’s e-commerce site, reach out to us at ProvenProductivity@bossard.com.

Are you thinking about implementing kitting and assembly or currently doing it at your facility? If you outsource these processes to Bossard, you can receive the following benefits:

Speed

Outsourcing kitting and assembly results in faster production and, consequently, speedier shipping. Order fulfillment becomes more efficient because you’re preparing to ship entire kits rather than the individual items in a kit.

Flexibility

We have the flexibility to customize entire product kits and assemblies quickly and efficiently. Our operators are cross-trained in a variety of functions and depend on a highly adaptable production system. When you require a change, we can do it in as little time and with as few steps as possible.

Cost Savings

By having us take care of kitting and assembly, you avoid having to invest in developing an in-house production system, which takes time and costs money. This reduces your overhead because you do not need extra staff, equipment, and warehouses. Your revenue becomes more stable because of the immediate outflow in production.

Technology Access

You gain access to state-of-the-art technologies such as the following:

• Automated Production System boosts productivity and reduces the Total Cost of Ownership. Among the smart systems involved are SmartBins that integrate weight sensors to communicate current stock levels, SmartLabels that put all relevant product information and status on the product bins, and SmartLockers, which controls inventory by keeping them in intelligent lockers equipped with RFID security technology.
• Enterprise Resource Planning distribution system allows for complete monitoring of products whether they’re in stock or shipping to customers. Our distribution centers are aware of stock availability, pricing, and order and delivery status in real-time. This enables us to fill orders from stock and ship them on the same day.

For more information about Bossard kitting and assembly, contact us at ProvenProductivity@bossard.com.

Bossard can assist you in improving production efficiency through kitting and assembly. Kitting bundles related products such as fasteners into one product called a kit, and assembly arranges all the parts of a kit so that it is ready for shipping.

We are well-equipped to handle all C-part kitting and assembly with one goal in mind: to fulfill your requirements efficiently, safely, and with the highest quality so that you receive products you need on time.

Capabilities

Our kitting capabilities include the following:

• Labels and bagging for simple kitting, or custom labeling and bagging for more complex kits with many parts. Custom packaging is available.
• Fulfilling complex work instructions that meet your standardization requirements.
• Assemblies that meet your Bill of Materials.
• Help with outside processing such as thread patching or plating.
• High-quality monitoring that covers the first article to the final inspection. Validation of all certifications occurs during receiving.
• Complete monitoring and accountability for all products that are either in stock or shipped to customers using state-of-the-art Enterprise Resource Planning for our distribution system.

Features

The following are some of our kitting and assembly features:

• For mass manufacturing, assure maximum financial capacity by evaluating processes and improving them.
• Add customer value by easing customer fulfillment and simplifying your Bill of Materials. Instead of dealing with many pieces, each with their own Stock Keeping Unit (SKU), you only have to track the kit SKU composed of the related pieces.
• Develop procedures to eliminate duplication and waste. These can include re-engineering product parts before production to create a more cost-effective design and resolving bottlenecks by predicting them ahead of time before they affect kitting and assembly.

For more information about Bossard’s kitting and assembly services, contact us at ProvenProductivity@bossard.com.

If you’re still dealing with individual fasteners, cabling, and other components, you’re aware of how much time and energy is necessary to pick through and organize each piece so that it can fit into assembly operations.

Saving Time and Energy

You can avoid such cumbersome practices through two related strategies:

• Kitting puts together related pieces, such as a nut, washer, and bolt, into one set. Each piece is still deducted from inventory.
• Assembly arranges all the pieces of a kit into one item for shipping. For example, the nut, washer, and bolt ship as one fastener product.

Advantages

Incorporating kitting and assembly into your manufacturing process offers several advantages:

• Products can be mass-customized with different options and variations, allowing for greater flexibility when changes are necessary.
• Grouping individual pieces together enhances our commitment to lot integrity. We track customer Stock Keeping Units (SKUs) from raw material and works-in-progress to all related kits and assemblies.
• By following SKU rationalization to keep, add, or remove pieces from a kit, we can balance supply and demand within the product. By combining the many SKUs of individual pieces into one kit with one SKU, you only have to check the one SKU. Lead times go down and costs drop.
• Optimizing automated production systems help produce kits that can meet customer demand.
• Your field engineers receive upgrades and repair kits with pieces that are already packaged and organized. They do not have to spend precious time sorting and looking for necessary components. Because all necessary pieces are already packaged in the kit, there’s no chance of a repair delay because someone forgot to bring a small and rarely used item.

Want to know more about how kitting and assembly can benefit you? Contact us at ProvenProductivity@bossard.com for more information.

Bossard wants to improve your productivity by providing Smart Factory Logistics, act as your Assembly Technology Expert, and deliver product solutions that address every fastening challenge. We have over 200,000 catalog products. To make it more convenient for you to find the right solutions, we have recently released a catalog excerpt containing about 5,000 operating and control elements. This excerpt contains the following categories:

• Handwheels and Handles for manually adjusting equipment and controlling access to compartments through solid handwheels or cover crank handles with or without cylindrical handles that are either fixed or can fold away.
• Clamping Knobs to help with grip or secure components through lobes, texturing, or knurling, and in wing, star, cross, and three-star nuts or screws.
• Clamping and Tension Levers to hold or secure elements manually. They may use adjustable handles and may release tension through a button-push.
• Handles to ease movement or adjustments of machinery by providing a handhold. They may be cylindrical, plain spherical, or mushroom knobs, or may be T, bridge, or cylindrical handles.
• Control Elements let you control functions by maximizing your grip through knurling or by revealing adjustment gradations using numbered dividing marks.
• Leveling Elements help ensure that equipment remains level even if the surface they are resting on is not. Optional rubber inserts can prevent slipping.
• Indexing and Positioning Elements let you adjust elements efficiently and quickly. They include indexing handles, ball-lock pins, index plungers, ball-ended thrust screws, and spring and lateral plungers.
• Hinges allow elements such as doors and lids to move and include free-swinging variants that contain threaded studs or inserts, or through holes.

The quickest way to get this catalog is to download it to your PC as a PDF file. You can navigate immediately to the category you want by clicking the link in the table of contents.

Beyond this range of products, we also deliver over 10,000 customized solutions. We can provide the exact elements you need through joint development or drawings that you produce. For more information, please contact your local Bossard unit.

When advanced manufacturing demands the sealing of fluid ports, precision is critical but so is flexibility. So, many production environments now rely on expansion-style plugs to replace traditional sealing methods. To add value to many engine applications, the SFC KOENIG® line of expander seals boast liberal tolerances:

• Push-style plugs have tolerances of 0.1mm or 0.004 in.
• Pull-style plugs have tolerances of +0.12mm or 0.005 in.

These allowances have proven their value during part installation because they minimize the misalignment that is common for many seal types. An incorrectly calibrated cup seal or ball plug installation can require laborious and expensive fixes when removal and reinstallation of the plugs is necessary. The entire system may fail, increasing the potential for damage, safety risks, and warranty expenses. Errors also raise scrap rates, which further drives cost up.

KOENIG EXPANDER® seals offer many advantages:

• Allowances do not relate to the plug diameter. The entire expansion line can support a +0.1mm or +0.12mm tolerance even if the sealing component measures only 3mm. This flexibility becomes especially valuable when sealing small fluid ports.
• Typical seals, such as cup plugs, ball plugs, pin plugs, and other types of expansion-style plugs, demand extra machining, such as reaming, to prepare the hole. These additional processes can affect pressure limits for harder materials. KOENIG EXPANDER® seals require no such additions.
• Other plugs may increase their tolerances by using chemical sealants. But, such materials risk contamination and the eventual destruction of the seal barrier when affected by vibration and heat. By avoiding sealants and additives, KOENIG EXPANDER® seals create secure metal-to-metal seals that avoid those problems.
• Pin plugs require assembling two pieces during installation. KOENIG EXPANDER® seals consist of only one piece, which eliminates the errors of plug assembly, and improves manufacturing speed reliability.

The flexible tolerance allowances of KOENIG EXPANDER® seals have proven themselves in over five billion parts installed with a failure rate of less than one part per million. Such success helps to reduce costs, lowers risk, and increase reliability in today’s high-speed production environments.

For more information about SFC KOENIG® products, contact us today at ProvenProductivity@bossard.com.

The ProSert XTN20 has proven itself as a capable blind rivet nut tool because of its light weight, high speed, good ergonomics, long endurance, and flexibility in pull-to-stroke and pull-to-force modes. These factors add up to higher productivity and low installation cost for each fastener.

The tool includes multiple high-strength installation mandrels that install quickly and easily as explained by these steps in the following video.

• First, use a spanner wrench of the correct size to release the torque on both the lock nut and nose casing. You can then manually loosen and remove both the nose piece and the nose casing to reveal the mandrel.
• To release the mandrel, pull the nose pin away from the chuck nut and set it in the L groove. You can then manually loosen and remove the chuck nut as well as the mandrel.
• You can then reverse the process to install a new mandrel with a different size, the nose casing, and the nose piece.

Finally, adjust one of the following elements, depending on how you are setting the rivet nut.

• Stroke distance. Slide open the red sleeve in the back of the tool and then use the pin-push tool to adjust the silver dial for the minimum and maximum stroke length.
• Pressure. Push the silver button by the red knob and then turn the knob clockwise to increase pressure or counterclockwise to decrease the pressure.

Need more information on how to use different tools to install specific fasteners? Then please contact Bossard today at ProvenProductivity@Bossard.com.

As part of our commitment to adding value by delivering solutions to improve your productivity, this video introduces the rivet nut tool. Bossard’s North American Product Manager for Riveting and Clinching Technology demonstrates the advantages and use of this smart tool. This tool represents one of a series that includes tools for blind or POP® rivets, and torque drivers. All these tools operate on battery power to free you from cords and air hoses. This energy source lets you set up to 3,000 M6 rivet nuts on one charge. This rivet nut tool also operates faster than its air-hose counterpart. This can make a difference in productivity over many assemblies.

The smarts of the rivet nut tool come from its ability to track its use. It integrates a sensor that measures the force used to set each rivet nut with an accuracy of at least 99 percent. You can immediately check a green screen on the back of the tool to verify that the setting was successful.

Monitoring results displayed on a force-over-stroke curve is an option. Because you can program the tool with the included software, you can view and set acceptable limits for the tool. Those values are then assigned to an assembly serial number. Integrating an optional bar code scanner into the tool to read the number is possible. Several programs are then read into the tool and performed on the same workstation. An optional WiFi module can send data to a quality documentation computer without having to use cables and plugs.

 For more information, please contact us at ProvenProductivity@bossard.com today.

How do you know if the fastener you installed is tensioned to its specifications? How can you be sure that your line operators are installing the correct number of fasteners in the correct locations? If you are using a standard tool, you have no way of knowing for sure.

Smart Tools

That’s why Bossard offers several different “Smart Tools” with process monitoring capabilities. Tooling options exist for torque guns, blind rivets, blind rivet nuts, and lock bolts. Data from these tools is stored as either a torque/angle curve for torque guns or a force/stroke curve for riveting fasteners. Each type of tool functions slightly differently, but all can be outfitted with optional upgrades, such as a barcode scanner that allows the tool to associate a specific workpiece serial number with one or several completed fastener installations.

One tool can store many different programs and can install several different parts without the need for recalibration or adjustment of settings. For example, one Smart Tool for blind rivets can install three different rivets of the same diameter in succession without needing to adjust stroke distance or pulling force each time.

All tools are programmable and come with software to customize settings for any job, allowing a programmer to set OK/NOK limits on the measured quantities. OK readings from the tool will present the operator with a positive confirmation. NOK readings will present a notification that can be cleared by someone with the proper permissions – whether that is the operator, or a quality manager depends on the factory’s individual preferences.

The process monitoring function does not slow down tool cycle time, and Smart Tools outperform many standard tools in side-by-side speed tests.

For more information on how process monitoring can improve your quality assurance methods, contact Bossard today at ProvenProductivity@bossard.com.