EoW May 2008

feature

Wire bending & forming

W hen the “new” AT&T began its first day on 21 st November, 2005, the company celebrated its transformation with a new logo: actually the familiar old one, but revitalised by ribbons of blue circling a spinning three-dimensional globe. It was a shrewd choice, with its suggestion of telephone wire girdling the earth, binding together nations and peoples, working the magic of communications in the far corners. With all respect to the AT&T design team and their refurbished symbol, reaching and turning those corners was made possible by a speciality that supports not only telephony but also a host of other high-tech applications – automotive, aeronautic, refrigeration – in which connectivity is vital and space is limited. Bending narrow strands of wire without compromising their integrity is a kind of magic of its own, made available to millions around the world by means of the products and services reviewed in this section. A good connection has no static. Bending and forming are not static – but processes on a continuum of improvement. A case in point is the current generation of CNC-based spring formers from Itaya Engineering, of Japan. These units offer numerical control of wire feed and tool movement to produce complex springs to ever more accurate dimensions, in one continuous operation. A graphical user interface now permits shortened set-up of the forming program with the entry of dimensions as-is. Many generic designs are contained in the control system’s memory. The company asserts, confidently and accurately, that these advantages were unimaginable just a few years ago. Even more important – to its clients and to those clients’ customers – Itaya is at work on the new functions that it will make available in the next generation of its spring formers. AT&T claims that its new corporate logo “symbolises innovation, integrity, quality, reliability, and unsurpassed customer care.” It might have been referring to attributes of the companies represented in the pages of this section.

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EuroWire – May 2008