Heat staking is a process that doesn’t come up in social conversations. It’s very rare that you’ll get together with friends and discuss heat staking over coffee. But the interesting thing about heat staking is that although it may not come up in conversations, it is something you interact with on a daily basis through the products you use.
Heat staking is a process used to bond plastic to metal. This process is typically used in the automotive industry, the telecom industry, and you guessed it, manufacturing of consumer products. Heat staking equipment is used to actually join the various components and materials together.
How Does Heat Staking Work?
The heat staking process starts out by heating the plastic at a certain degree and pressure to deform and soften the plastic. Once the plastic has been deformed and softened, it’s then molded into the necessary shape while the next component is being fixed. The plastic will then be cooled under pressure and joined with the necessary parts.
That’s a very condensed version of the heat staking process but just know that it’s a very tedious and meticulous process.
Heat Staking in Your Everyday Life Through Consumer Appliances
If you were to do a quick run-through of your home, you would see all kinds of things either made from molded plastic or things made with plastic that are joined to metal and other materials… It’s a guarantee that you’ll see products that have undergone heat staking in every single room of your home actually. You may not know it but nine times out of ten, it probably is.
As mentioned earlier, you’re not going to bring up heat staking in conversation nor does anyone just sit back and wonder how their home appliances were made, but in this moment, take a second and look around your home.
Let’s do a checklist of consumer appliances you probably have in your home that are products of heat staking.
- Computers
- Cell phones
- Speakers
- Electric razor
- Coffee maker
- Dish draining rack
If you checked off any of these items, then you are interacting with heat staking in your everyday life. Again, it’s not something you’d typically think of but without that process, we wouldn’t have a lot of the technologies and capabilities we have today.
Because of the upward trajectory of technology and its many advancements and processes, Jamaica is looking to increase engagement in Diaspora in science, technology, and innovation… That just goes to show you that interest in technological advancements aren’t just location-specific; interest in technology is happening all over the world.
Heat Staking Benefits
The heat staking process has several benefits, especially to those utilizing heat staking equipment. For one, the heat staking process can be fully completed in one machine cycle, which is considerably more efficient than process completion through individual operations per fastener. Secondly, the base material doesn’t need to be changed… it can remain “as is.”
Quality
Those two benefits are indeed great benefits of heat staking but one of the best benefits of heat staking is the level of quality it gives products. Let’s look at cell phone cases as an example. Cell phone cases are designed to protect phones, right? Yes. So have you ever bought a cell phone case that broke when you dropped it or didn’t fit your phone exactly right?
We’ve all probably experienced this at least once in our lives but the point is that when you have phone cases that easily break or if your phone doesn’t fit properly, that’s typically because the heat staking process was of low quality.
Whether you’re looking for a company that provides heat staking services or if you’re looking to buy heat staking equipment, you have to make sure the quality is high. Not doing so can lead to bad reviews, unhappy customers, and a drop in sales. According to Assembly magazine, when “quality is at stake,” (pun intended), materials, cosmetic needs, the design of the parts, and cycle time, are all going to play a crucial role in how well a product is made.
Conclusion
As you can see, heat staking is a process that no one ever brings up in social conversations but it certainly plays a significant role in how we engage in social conversations. From cell phones and cell phone cases to coffee machines and computers, heat staking plays a role in everyone’s everyday life and without it, we would not be able to function and operate in our daily lives.
