News & insight

bigHead® Bonding Fasteners continues its investment in innovation with the appointment of two more engineers.  Central to bigHead’s strategy is the long-term investment in engineering expertise and composites knowledge.  Having received an outstanding report earlier this year from Innovate UK for a KTP with Cranfield University, bigHead has now built a team dedicated to meeting their customer’s most challenging problems.  “When you have companies like GE or Faurecia knocking on your door for help with fastening their composites, I think you might be onto something!”, comments MD Matthew Stevens. “We believe in investing in UK innovation for the long term. Great solutions are not created overnight.”

Some of the innovations planned for launch in the next year include a new range of fasteners with application performance data, designed to remove a lot of the guesswork in fastener selection.  Another solution is focussed on speeding up and automating the bonding process.  A third is focussed on the integration of fasteners in the moulding process itself, saving time and improving repeatability.

“With so much creativity and so many great ideas it can sometimes be as much of a challenge to decide what not to do as what to do.  Having a disciplined process is critical, and of course there must be open and continuous dialogue with customers.”

Alongside their investment in innovation, bigHead has also been developing new production technology with its UK partner, Expert Automation and Tooling.  “This new technology is a very exciting development.  It will give us more control and flexibility as well as a platform for further expansion.  We have been delighted with our partners at Expert who ensure we get state of the art production technology.”

bigHead® continues to work on a wide range of projects and applications with design engineers in the automotive, wind power, marine, rail and construction sectors.  With over 50 years’ experience and expertise to draw on, bigHead’s remains focussed on providing engineering solutions to design engineers who do not want to be compromised by their composite fastening.