Stamped & Formed Precision Electronic Parts

Our precision stamping capabilities deliver consistent dimensional accuracy across high-volume production runs. In progressive die stamping, a coil of strip is fed through a series of stations that each perform one operation — pierce, blank, coin, bend, draw — so the part is built up incrementally and cut free only at the final station. Because every feature is referenced to the same strip carrier and pilot holes, station-to-station registration is tight and repeatable, which is what makes the process the standard for high-volume contacts, clips, and shield cans with minimal secondary operations.

These parts are thin-gauge work. Typical material thickness runs about 0.10–0.50 mm, in alloys chosen for the job: nickel silver and tin-plated steel for shield cans, phosphor bronze and beryllium copper where spring temper and contact force matter, brass and copper where conductivity leads. Thin stock stamps and forms cleanly but is unforgiving of tool wear and burr, so edge condition and flatness are controlled as deliberately as the nominal dimensions.

Stamping capabilities include:

• Progressive die stamping for complex geometries at high stroke rates
• Fine blanking for clean, full-thickness sheared edges without secondary machining
• Multi-stage forming, coining, and drawing in a single die
• Feature-dependent tolerances down to ±0.025 mm where the design requires it

Spring contacts, retention clips, and electrical connectors require precise forming to achieve consistent contact force and electrical performance. The electrical behavior of a contact follows directly from its mechanics: normal force sets the real contact area at the interface, and contact resistance falls as that force rises. Form the spring a little too soft and resistance drifts and the contact is prone to fretting; too stiff and insertion force and stress relaxation become problems. So the bend geometry, material temper, and any post-form set are controlled to hold the target force window across the full production run — and across temperature, since spring alloys relax differently at automotive temperatures.

Material selection drives this. Beryllium copper gives the highest spring force and fatigue life for high-cycle contacts; phosphor bronze is the cost-effective general-purpose spring alloy; nickel silver adds corrosion resistance and clean solderability for shield-can fingers. Plating at the mating surface (commonly tin, or nickel under gold for low, stable contact resistance) is specified to the duty cycle.

Common applications:

• Board-to-board spring contacts
• Shield can retention clips
• Grounding fingers and EMI contacts
• Battery contacts and terminals

View EMI shielding components →

Achieving dimensional consistency in stamped parts requires rigorous process control, because in high-volume stamping the enemy is drift, not a single bad part. As a tool runs, punches and dies wear, burr height grows, and clearances open up, so a process that is centered on day one can walk out of tolerance over a few hundred thousand strokes. We hold tight tolerances by treating that drift as the thing to measure: statistical process control tracks critical dimensions over time, so a trend toward a limit is caught and corrected — by tool maintenance or a sharpening interval — before any out-of-spec part is made, rather than sorted out afterward.

Capability is reported the way automotive customers expect, as process capability indices (Cpk) on the dimensions that matter, with first-piece approval at setup and ongoing in-process checks against it. Quality measures include:

• First-piece inspection and ongoing validation
• SPC monitoring of critical dimensions
• Regular tooling inspection and maintenance
• 100% automated optical inspection (where specified)

Tool design and manufacturing are critical to achieving precision stamping results — in a stamped part, the geometry and most of the cost are decided in the die, not on the press. We design and maintain tooling in-house, which has three concrete payoffs: the strip layout and station sequence are optimized for material utilization and clean forming up front; preventive maintenance and re-sharpening are scheduled against actual stroke counts to hold tolerance over the tool's life; and when a design or footprint changes, the tool can be revised quickly instead of waiting on an outside toolmaker. For shield cans and contacts this also means the footprint, wall, and aperture pattern are all under one roof, so a custom drop-in to your board is a tooling change we control end to end.

Learn about our manufacturing capabilities →