Mudge Fasteners has had the privilege of producing a variety of custom fasteners for a wide range of customers in many different industries. Custom fasteners can add value to your product by making it more proprietary, or they can be used for an often repeated process in the field to save time.

In order to design a custom fastener, three primary considerations need to be made: the print, the quantity desired, and the length of production lead times.

The first step in getting a custom fastener fabricated is to provide a print, or CAD drawing, containing the pertinent information about the fastener:

Diameter
Thread pitch
Length
Material
Finish

If you do not have someone who can design in CAD programs on staff, you can typically outsource this work pretty easily, with many talented technicians both in the US and overseas offering their services at an affordable rate.

Once you have your print, you’ll want to consider the quantities you need to order. If you’re producing a product, a good general rule of thumb is order a year’s worth of product at a time. Since you’ll have significantly longer lead times when trying to restock custom parts than you would for standard parts, you have to stay ahead of inventory needs and order a little more than you think you’ll need at first glance.

The last consideration when ordering custom fasteners is the length of the lead time from the time the order is placed to when you’ll receive your parts. Depending on what country your custom part is being manufactured in, you may have to wait anywhere from eight weeks all the way up to six months to receive what you ordered. This is another reason you’ll need to really focus on inventory control… when you need to replenish your stock it’s not as easy as buying from your local Mudge distribution warehouse.

If you have questions about how to design and order a custom fastener, contact Mudge Fasteners at (800) 634-0406. We have over 100 years of combined experience in our sourcing team, and we can use our expertise to help you get exactly what you need when it comes to custom fasteners.

Steps to Designing a Custom Fastener