Balford produces carbon steel stamped and deep-drawn parts — housings, sleeves, ferrules and brackets — with plating-ready surfaces for cost-effective OEM volumes.
Deep-drawn low-carbon steel housings with plating-ready surfaces.
Stamped carbon-steel ferrules for harness and connector applications.
65Mn spring-steel shim blanks with tight flatness control.
Carbon steel is the workhorse material for structural and plated components at Balford: deep-drawn solenoid housings, slotted ferrules, brackets and precision plates in mild and spring steel grades.
Grade selection decides whether a part forms in one hit or needs redraws and an anneal. What we see in production:
Two coils can look identical on the drawing and behave completely differently in the press: the r-value and the thickness tolerance decide the number of draws, and both come from the mill certificate, not from the grade name alone. How draw ratio and draw stages are calculated →
The failure modes are predictable and almost always tooling-side: wrinkling when the blank holder force is too low, tearing when the draw ratio or the die radius is wrong, and earing when the blank layout ignores the rolling direction. That is why the same material can run clean in one tool and scrap in another. The four calculations that prevent it → Estimate the press tonnage first with the stamping force calculator or the deep draw calculator.
Carbon steel is the cheapest of the three and the most predictable to draw in volume. Stainless steel adds corrosion resistance at the cost of faster work hardening and an earlier anneal. Aluminium cuts weight, but its lower modulus and higher springback usually mean more stages for the same geometry. See stainless steel, aluminium and the deep drawing guide.
Real projects from Balford's production history:
Mild steel (SPCC/DC01 class), high-strength and spring steel (65Mn) are commonly processed. Grade selection follows the drawing and function.
Yes. Parts can be supplied ready for plating (zinc, nickel, chrome) or we coordinate surface treatment with qualified suppliers.
Yes — low-carbon steel is one of the easiest materials to deep draw, giving predictable wall thickness and good repeatability.
Send us your 2D drawing or STEP/IGES model. We will review material, tolerances, forming requirements and production volume before quoting.
Where the housing carries flux rather than only shape, the choice moves to DC04 or the DT4 pure iron family.