Clamason Industries

When Jaguar made the X-Type at Halewood they turned to Clamason to produce the left and right hand versions of their curtain airbag inflator housing. This is why: By turning over the blank after the first stage, our transfer press line enabled the same set of press tools to make both left and right hand versions of the housing - a huge competitive cost advantage. This line of six presses located together provided rapid transfer of individual pressings between stations by pick-and-place robots. The components, two per car, were supplied on a just-in-time basis to Ford's first-tier supplier TRW at Peterlee, Co Durham, UK, where the curtain airbags and 9in long, round inflators were all fitted. The Clamason concept was to exploit the fact that its customer TRW could bend the mild steel material - once only - to close around the inflator. The idea proved so successful that the same principle was applied by TRW to airbag inflator housings made by Clamason for a GM SUV (sport utility vehicle) built in Mexico. The SUV line ran at 250 vehicles per week, in comparison with weekly production rates of 650 for the Jaguar X-Type and 180 for the X-Type Estate. Our material properties solution of folding steel shut to enclose a device and their cost-saving process solution of the transfer press line were successfully carried over to various other components. Clamason used the same principle to make the tethers securing the entire airbag assembly to the roof of both Jaguar X-Type models and the GM SUV, six per car. Clamason employed the idea, too, to realize the design of another type of housing, for an airbag inflator deploying special roll-over curtains on the BMW 5 Series. This customer was Simula, Inc, a US defence and personnel safety equipment OEM located at Tempe, Arizona. The automotive business of Simula ultimately closed its UK factory at Ashington, Northumberland, and production was sold to the French company Zodiac, a producer of airbag fabric as well as of military and professional rigid inflatable boats or RIB's. In fact Clamason has expanded into making enclosures for several of the World's five airbag OEM's including Autoliv and Takata. Another is Delphi Automotive Systems, who has designated Clamason as a 'Worldwide Supplier of Choice'. Delphi, headquartered in Troy, Michigan, USA, is one of the World's largest automotive supplier with around 200,000 employees and 200 wholly-owned manufacturing sites and is Clamason's no.1 automotive customer.