News & insight

Lawrence Cook and Oli le Marquand-Brown, our development engineers, are now based at the Innovation Centre in Cranfield Technology Park.  During summer 2022,  Will Dalrymple, editor of FAST magazine, visited the new premises and spoke at length to Lawrence and Oli. The resulting feature article delves into the reasons for and huge benefits gained through our R&D facility being located…

bigHead Bonding Fasteners is pleased to have secured a base for its composite fastening solutions development team within Cranfield University Technology Park, home to nearly 60 science, technology and knowledge-based businesses. Lawrence Cook and Oli le Marquand Brown now occupy an office within the Innovation Centre, a stone’s throw from the University’s Enhanced Composites and Structures Centre. bigHead has a…

Fastening SMC panels:  As part of our R&D partnership with Cranfield University, we have produced a demonstration mould tool that shows how bigHeads can be embedded into that trickiest of materials and processes, sheet moulding compound (SMC), without any ingress of resin into the fixing.  Furthermore, our embedding solution is a one-step process that removes the need for any secondary…

The value of talking to industry colleagues face to face was made very apparent at JEC World 2022. Virtual meetings and conferences have been a life-line during recent times but the ability to demonstrate new techniques and let people have a ‘hands-on’experience is invaluable. Thank you to everyone who visited our stand. We gained such a lot from all of…

At last – JEC World 2022! May 3-5th. There will be a lot to share and discuss given the three intervening years since JEC World 2019. We know that we have a lot to talk about anyway! Visit our stand to discover our solutions and latest innovations for composite material fastening challenges. As the leading trade show for the industry,…

We are very pleased to announce that Oli le Marquand-Brown has joined the bigHead® Bonding Fasteners team as Development Engineer. Oli joins from Cranfield University where he was a Research Assistant and completed a master’s degree in Automotive Engineering. Oli conducted extensive research on the use of commercially viable thermoplastic and recycled carbon fibre reinforced polymers and was awarded IMechE…

Fastening composite material presents many challenges, all of which can be overcome by careful selection of the correct solution. There are many solutions and this in itself presents another challenge. Bossard has compiled a White paper on bonding. DOWNLOAD BOSSARD WHITE PAPER ON BONDING  Bossard’s White Paper ‘Fastening solutions for composites and plastics’ introduces a selection of technologies and gives…

You may not consider bigHead composite bonding fasteners as one of your key design tools – but we’d like to argue that they are! They may seem small and inconsequential – until you need to think about joining materials together. Securing the components in your design whilst you try to satisfy multiple conditions probably causes quite a few headaches. Perhaps…

Light-weighting no longer means simply moving from steel to aluminium or magnesium. Today’s light-weighted products need structural materials that are lighter still. Wafer-thin sheets of metal, composite materials with glass or carbon fibre, and hybrid structures are the materials that designers increasingly work with. Joining these materials together in ways that meet the design specification can present challenges. Some materials…

At bigHead we find that global projects increasingly follow a familiar pattern; design and development in Europe where costs are high, transition to China for volume production.  Such global manufacturing is complex, requiring not just the accurate transfer of knowledge and expertise but the management of different cultures and expectations. As part of the Bossard Group, bigHead is well placed to ensure that…