Name/Title
National Rivet & Mfg. Co.Scope and Content
Historical information on National Rivet & Mfg. Co. for 1976 Bicentennial Celebration in Waupun, WI.
*Facts are typed and was scanned with mistakes, if any, left uncorrected.
The National Rivet & Mfg. Co.
In 1929 the first rivet machines were brought to Waupun and the National Rivet & Mfg. Co. was set up in the Shaler plant. By the mid-thirty's National Rivet began to buy small lots of The Shaler Company stock and over the next twenty years acquired 51% of the ownership. In 1974, National tendered an offer to purchase the remaining stock and today owns 100% of The Shaler Company.
Throughout the years from 1929 to the present day, National Rivet has continued to modernize its plant, facilities, and machinery to stay competitive in both the ability to produce massive quantities of fasteners and to produce cold headed parts which bear little similiarity to those of yesteryear. Modern cold headed parts often have many additional functions in addition to fastning. (Some serve as electrical contacts and are gold or silver plated.) Others are specially designed to replace a number of parts previously required for a specific job and may serve as pivots, axles, spacers, or other devices where their use cuts costs, improves quality, or saves time for the companies that use them.
Rivets and cold headed fasteners are made from steel, aluminum, stainless steels, brass, copper, silver, and titanium. Steel rivets frequently are plated with zinc, cadmium, nickel in National's new plating department which is fully equipped to meet OSHA and EPA requirements for safety and pollution control of waste water.
Aluminum rivets and parts are often color anodized as customers require in the National plant.
Much of the National Rivet engineering talent is devoted to the development of machinery and tooling required to set rivets in thousands of products manufactured by National Rivet customers. This machinery ranges in size from the Model B machine which can set rivets nearly as small as a common pin to the Model 1000 and 1200 capable of setting steel rivets about the diameter of your little finger.
In recent years, National has modernized the design and operation of riveting equipment leading the way toward quieter, safer riveting equipment and spelling the end for old fashioned "Rube Goldberg" type machinery. Many National riveting heads are used by builders of automation machinery, and some of the equipment built and tooled in Waupun uses as many as ten separate rivet heads operating over indexing tables and tooling.
The National Rivet Company employs approximately 350 persons making it one of Waupun's largest employers as well as one of the oldest in continuous operation. National products are sold through representatives who cover every State in the Union and every industry using fasteners and cold headed parts. Customers are as diverse as manufacturers of bed frames to aerospace guidance systems. From snowmobile to medical equipment and from farm machinery to cigarette lighters. From automobiles to toy trucks and buses. Some National rivets even landed on the moon.
Being so diversified in its customers, National Rivet had proven its ability to better cope with downward business cycles than many other fastener companies who were dependent on specific industries such as the appliance or automotive industries.
National has become a leader in the industry in small sized rivets, having equipment to handle and set small fasteners with outstanding dependability. National also developed an anvil so outstanding for its accurate and uniform manufacture and ability to set more rivets that it has the registered name of "Max-Set". These innovations, and others, are continuing to earn National Rivet and Mfg. Co. an increasing share of the fastener market which adds directly to the health of the Waupun community.Acquisition
Accession
2016.0075Source or Donor
Waupun Area Chamber of CommerceAcquisition Method
Donation
