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The Bead Electronics Swaging Process: From Concept to Reality

Bead’s scrapless swaging process has been minimizing waste while maximizing precision and efficiency since 1914. This unique cold forming process creates consistent components by moving - not removing - metal.

Are you looking for a custom component supplier who can deliver pins to your specifications? Are you unsure which metal fabrication process would best suit your needs?

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Reference Guide To Plating For Electronic Connector Pins And Contacts

 Choosing the right plating material for your electrical connectors is critical for ensuring durability, conductivity, and resistance to corrosion.

Need a quick reference to help decide what plating will best serve your project and budget? Are you unsure which material is ideal for your application?

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The Bead True Grip Pin: An SMT Solution to PCB Pin Insertion

True Grip Pins are a reliable and cost-effective alternative to pin-through-paste processing, which causes debris to be disbursed across the PCB creating contamination, defects, and scrap, as well as bent pins.

Bead's True Grip Pin enables you to leverage the through-hole strength while still processing its insertion on the SMT line.

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Interconnect Options for Defense and Aerospace Applications

Interconnection options for defense and aerospace applications are diverse. From boots on the ground to satellites in the sky, there’s a demand for lighter, stronger, and more cost-effective connectors.

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Custom Contact Pins for Heavy Duty Applications

In the heavy equipment and commercial vehicle sectors, product integrity and performance are vitally important for ensuring user safety. A standard contact pin may not be sufficient to ensure a reliable connection or hold a signal in the harsh environments to which they’ll be subjected.

Find out what interconnect options, material considerations, and more you need to keep in mind when working on your defense or aerospace manufacture. From boots on the ground to satellites in the sky, there’s a demand for lighter, stronger, and more cost-effective connectors.

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A Complete Contact Pin Customization Guide

Our complete Customization Guide shows you every component you can customize, including base and plating materials, pin shape, diameter, length, and retention features. Whether you need pins that withstand extreme environments or meet tight tolerances, this guide ensures you have the right information to design contact pins that perform.

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A Through Hole Size Guide for Connector Pins

Bead Electronics specializes in manufacturing high-quality connector pins, expertly crafted for diverse functionalities such as power, signal transmission, or electro-mechanical uses.

Need help determining the right through hole size for your standard connector pins? Look no further. This reference sheet will show you the way.



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Custom Contact Pins for PCB Assemblies

Bead Electronics has been manufacturing custom contact pins for PCB assemblies for over a century. Our custom electrical connectors ensure reliable connections even in tough conditions - essential for the automotive, telecom, aerospace, industrial, and medical industries.

Download this quick reference guide on our custom pins for PCB applications to discover all the ways Bead can work with you to optimize your contact pin design.

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Bead Virtual Tour

Bead Electronics is proud to manufacture end to end contact pins, wire contact pins, and hollow contact pins. This video gives you an overview of our Headquarters in Milford, CT.

The True Grip Pin

A feature in our Tandem Pin® series, the True Grip Pin has a square thru-hole section for secure placement into a PCB and a round flange to provide a consistent seating plane giving your solder a large surface for reliable surface mount processing.

Swaging Process

The bead-formed manufacturing process, called swaging, yields superior value. That's because it's a high-speed, virtually scrapless cold-forming process capable of producing small metal parts that are dimensionally consistent and inexpensive.

Bead Overview

Watch an overview of our history, our technology, and our latest innovations as a U.S. manufacturer and global leader of precision contact pins.

100 Years & Five Generations

Watch a historical account of Bead over the last 100 years, as told by past and present employees and members of the Bryant family.

Custom Pin For Insert Molding

A well-known U.S. based plastic molder needed a right angle pin to be insert molded with a leg length longer than any commercially available option. No off-the-shelf solution existed.

Bead Electronics created a custom bend method using a different machine and punch setup to accommodate the length and 90° angle of the pin. Through careful testing, engineers discovered the brass pin required a 2–3° over-bend to achieve a true 90°.

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Case Study: Driving Efficiency Through Precision Engineering

The customer’s existing blind-rivet design required manual alignment and slow
installation, creating a major production bottleneck.

Bead Electronics engineered a custom square hollow pivot pin that press-fits directly into the extrusion’s semi-circular hole.

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