| Rolling |
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The first stage of the manufacturing process for Helical Bar begins with a coil of a specifically chosen diameter of round wire - as shown in the drawings above. This round wire is then put through our rolling machine. This machine was hand built by one of our engineers specifically for this use and in it's most basic form consists of two rollers with a groove each that are on top of each other and counterrotate to pull the round wire through the grooves. Most of the round wire becomes flattened outside the groove and is work hardened - and later becomes the fins - while the rest that passes through the groove remains relatively soft and later forms the core. The finished rolled wire is shown below. |
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| Twisting |
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The second stage of the manufacturing process starts by moving the rolled wire over to our twisting machine. Again, this machine was hand built by one of our engineers with this use specifically in mind. The rolled wire is fed through one end of the 10-metre-long machine and clamped into the other end. The wire is then clamped at the other end of the machine and before one end twists, forcing the fins around the outside in tension and shortening the core in compression. The pitch of the wire NOT perfect because if it was it would be easier to twist back out of blockwork once inserted. Instead the pitch is NEAR perfect; with the imperfections being more than enough to clamp the wire into masonry, resins and timbers. By using this method of twisting, the wire is also quality assured, with any flawed wire snapping in the twisting machine. |
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| Cutting |
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This Helical Bar can now be coiled back up in it's 10 metre length and sold as 10 metre coiled Bar Flex. To create smaller lengths of Helical Bar another machine was created with an adjustable stopper on the end - set to the correct length required. Twisted bar is then fed into this machine and when it hits the stopper, a cutting blade comes down and cuts the Bar. These length can be sold as Bar Flex, Cem Flex, Tim Flex or Resi Flex. On some Helical Fixings we can cut over 2,500 per hour. |
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| Pointing |
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The final manufacturing process is to add pointed ends to the cut Helical Fixings. Again, we have a machine hand built by our engineer to solve this. A belt feeds the Helical Fixings horizontally into a drum with slots in. This wheel then transports the Helical Fixings round to a grinding wheel which grinds down the edges of it, forming a point on the end. Our single pointed helical products include Skew Fast, Fast Flex and Turbo Flex. This pointing process can be repeated for the other side of the fixings to form our Dri Flex, Retro Flex and Bow Flex. |
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