1.Raw Material Inspection: We use A36 carbon steel wire rods as base material. Upon incoming, we verify the original material test report, carry out spectrometer chemical composition analysis and tensile & hardness testing. Visual inspection is performed to check for surface cracks, scale, rust, scratches and folding defects. Qualified wire rods go through multi-pass wire drawing to reach the required blank diameter, followed by pickling, phosphating and lubricant coating treatment. This process removes surface oxide skin, reduces friction resistance during cold forming and extends the service life of cold heading dies.
2.Cold Heading Forming:
The treated wire rod is automatically fed into a multi-station cold heading machine and cut into fixed-length cylindrical blanks. With progressive stamping by customized precision moulds, the blank is upset and extruded step by step to form the hexagonal body, integrated flange and serrated anti-slip knurling on the flange surface. Key dimensions including hex across flats, flange outer diameter, flange thickness and serration tooth profile are monitored online. Products with incomplete knurling, tilt or out-of-tolerance dimensions will be eliminated in time.
3.Thread Tapping:
Cold-formed nut blanks are conveyed to high-speed tapping equipment. Precision HSS taps machine internal threads according to metric, UNC or UNF standards. Continuous cutting coolant is supplied to lower cutting heat, reduce thread burrs and avoid thread burn. Go and no-go thread gauges are adopted for on-line sampling inspection, to ensure thread pitch, major/minor diameter tolerance and thread engagement fully comply with standard specifications.
4.Degreasing & Electroplating Pre-treatment:
All nut blanks are put into ultrasonic cleaning tanks to thoroughly remove drawing lubricant, tapping oil, fine metal chips and residual burrs. After rinsing and air drying, the workpieces go through alkaline degreasing, water rinsing, acid activation and surface adjustment. Oil stains and oxide layers on the surface are completely removed to obtain a clean and active base surface, which guarantees good adhesion of the subsequent zinc plating layer and avoids plating peeling or blistering.
5.Blue-white Zinc Plating & Passivation Sealing:
The pre-treated nuts are loaded into the electroplating bath for alkaline zinc plating to deposit a uniform zinc coating with controlled thickness. After zinc plating, the parts are rinsed and then treated with blue-white passivation solution to form a bright blue-white passive film on the zinc layer. A sealing agent is applied after passivation to seal the micro-pores of the zinc coating. This treatment greatly improves salt spray resistance and anti-corrosion performance, and maintains the uniform bright silver-blue appearance of blue-white zinc plating.
6.Finished Product Inspection & Packaging:
Sampling inspection covers dimensional measurement, thread assembly test, serration integrity, zinc coating thickness, plating uniformity, surface appearance check. Neutral salt spray test can be arranged according to customer requirements. Non-conforming products are sorted separately for rework or scrapping. Qualified hex flange nuts are fully dried to prevent water stains. They are packed into PE inner bags and export cartons following customer packing requirements. Each package is labelled clearly with product specification, material grade, batch number and quantity before shipment.