Clinching Improves Sheet Metal Assembly
July 29, 2025Comments
Clinching improves sheet metal assembly at Airvent Metal Products, after going in search of a fastening process for joining pre-finished, painted sheet metal parts used in aesthetic applications.
Ontario, Canada-based Airvent Metal Products fabricates standard and custom sheet metal products for the HVAC, architectural and electrical industries. Since 1994, it has relied primarily on resistance spot welding to join metal parts—less than ideal when joining pre-finished, painted parts.
“With growing demand for painted goods and tighter environmental regulations, we recently went in search of a new way to fasten parts,” says Airvent president Mo Chohan, "that also would be cost-effective and produce aesthetically appealing assemblies."
Its solution: a cold-metal clinching process from Press Lock Technologies, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
“As most of our materials are coated, clinching eliminates the tip dressing and change issues associated with spot welding," continues Chohan. “It also requires far less operator training. We had been looking for a clinching-machine manufacturer to build a custom production machine for us.”
Press Lock customized a standard machine to fit Airvent's available floor space, allowing it to build the machine stand themselves. “We were turned away by other firms that only offered us their standard products,” Chohan recalls. “Press Lock’s ‘nothing-is-impossible’ approach helped us develop a collaborative solution in a couple of weeks.”
Chohan also appreciates Press Lock’s support during machine commissioning. “The chief unexpected benefit was the rapid response to debugging issues,” he says. “Their team was onsite in most cases within 12 hr. and resolved issues with minimal follow-up from us.”
Productivity Boost
Since switching from welding to clinching, Airvent has seen an average increase of 15% in production speed, the firm reports, and as much as 30% in some cases, “particularly when fabricating processing heavily galvanized parts,” Chohan says—no electrode cleaning required."
The only challenge the team faced, explains Chohan, involved part design. “Our components were designed for spot welding, with narrow flanges,” he says. “Clinching requires a slightly larger flange to accommodate the die landing. We quickly addresses that challenge by modifying the part designs, fortunately with no loss of material yield.”
