A breakthrough in the manufacture of off-set hinges out of sheet metal material follows the development by Wilson Tool International of Swindon that requires only a single tool instead of three on a CNC punch press. In addition, the Wilson Tool design of hinge can be produced with plastic coated material, enables a full 270 deg of hinge movement against traditional hinge movements of 90 deg, will slash tool setting times to produce a hinge by at least 70 per cent and cut production time to a single hit process. The Wilson tool offset hinge tool is able to operate at higher speeds because it only has to travel half the distance of a conventional tooling method when bending the material.

It can produce hinges in up to 3 mm thick material with a 6 mm diameter hinge pin size and in single-hit lengths of 65 mm.

For piano style hinges, successive multiple hits can be repeated using the same tool down the length of the material.

Both the Wilson hinge tool and traditional hinge production require an initial blanking tool to produce the castleation shape.

However, normal hinge production then requires two successive hits to form the material to a 90o bend.

A second tool then creates a half-offset and wipes up the material ready for the third tool to complete the roll-over knuckle form that captivates the hinge pin.

With the Wilson method, after castleation, the single hit tool immediately forms up three knuckles and forms down two knuckles and completes the stroke with a half-roll to finalise the hinge form.

With this method, programming and setting of the tools is much faster and trial and error problems eliminated when setting conventional hinge tools to obtain the right height for the roll-over.

Also, the Wilson Tool design overcomes jamming caused by plastic coatings in the hammer of a conventional tool and eliminates any snagging of coatings in the final curled knuckle form.

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