„A small button with a big impact“

NEMA switches

Whether for ceiling lights, wall-mounted spotlights or corridor lighting – all sorts of buttons and switches are used to control these and other indoor light sources every day. A brief press is enough to ensure that the electricity flows safely through the wiring to the light source. Switches such as the North American NEMA designs depicted here have a plastic body below the switch or button itself which contains numerous stamped and bended metal parts. Bihler of America Inc. has been manufacturing every aspect of these components for more than 35 years in end-to-end, fully automated production lines which perform all the required operations from the raw materials stage through to the packaged finished product. A GRM 80 stamping and forming machine and a BZ 2 processing center are used to produce the necessary stamped and formed parts.

Efficient complete manufacture

The systems are equipped with all the required process modules for welding, thread cutting, screw insertion, feeding, testing and marking. The process also involves a number of special machines, which have been developed and constructed inhouse by Bihler of America and are connected to the Bihler machines. All the required plastic parts are also manufactured by Bihler of America on Arburg injection molding machines. Each of the lines outputs complete packaging units at the rate of 120 switches per minute. The fully automated manufacturing process ensures optimum efficiency and vertical integration, in particular because all the systems are connected to one another via a sophisticated pallet system. This ensures maximum output even if individual machines sometimes have to be stopped, for example for a change of material or maintenance work.