Hamilton Stamping displaces fabrication for the production of complex low volume components


Superior Boiler Works and Welding Limited builds and maintains boiler and heating systems. Superior was having difficulty fabricating several key components of their boiler systems economically and, in some cases, to the quality they required.

The first challenge they brought to Hamilton Stamping was a spout. In order to fabricate it, they had to bend a pipe, shape it and then cut it off. Once this was done, they still did not have the level of quality in the part that they wanted. Using our stamping expertise and technology we were able to start with a blank and then draw it up to exactly the shape they wanted economically and quickly.

This challenge was then followed by a request for production of a part best described as a "little dished but corrugated" component that they just couldn't fabricate. Again, stamping was the answer.

The challenges grew as they brought in more parts such as heat resistant stainless steel nozzles for gas burners for boilers. Fabricating them would have resulted in a lot of wasted expensive material. And after welding the parts together, they still would not get the quality part that they needed. They really wanted a single solid burner piece. We built the dies to stamp a cone that precisely met their requirements. The first burner was produced in a volume of 50 pieces. They then brought us a second different burner design and we produced another 70 pieces.

Then they challenged us further: "If you can do that, then make us a coupling piece to have one pipe fit onto the same size pipe". For them, this operation was a labour intensive fabricating process. We came up with a way to swage the original pipe to fit onto itself.

These jobs clearly demonstrated that stamping can be more cost effective than fabricating even at these low volumes for certain fabricated component designs.