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Norstan's Electrical Contact Manufacturing Blog

How to Find a Reliable Custom Electrical Contact Supplier

Website Team

Imagine if your automobile had rope steering, like an old-fashioned go kart. You could steer it, but not very accurately. Chances are, you’d be running into things and endangering other drivers. That’s what it’s like when you’re trying to work with an electrical contact supplier that has limited product knowledge. You’ll get to your destination – a finished parts order – but the journey is likely to be painful.

Norstan’s engineering team can make material and geometry recommendations for electrical contacts to meet specific application needs is as much art as it is science. It often requires iterative testing and sampling to zero in on a solution that does the best job of meeting the performance and life cycle needs of the switch it works within.

Over time, engineers develop a deep knowledge of what works and what doesn’t. They’re able to look at a design challenge and say, “I’ve seen this issue before. I know what to do to solve it.” Having this application knowledge in-house enables your electrical contact supplier to iterate to a final solution faster than if they rely on an outside partner for that expertise.

An electrical contact supplier with in-house tooling expertise is also able to respond faster to your needs. All communication happens within the company, ensuring that you get prompt answers to your questions. Passing your questions and requests via a third-party firm increases the odds of miscommunication. It can also slow project execution, because your requests need to be queued within two sets of production backlogs, not just one.

When problems do occur, an electrical contact supplier with in-house tooling expertise can respond and fix problems quickly, increasing the odds that you’ll get your parts on schedule with fewer production hiccups.

Machine tools are precision devices that must be rigorously maintained to ensure the components they produce for you are of consistently high quality. Your supplier is more likely to ensure that their machine tools are well maintained than your supplier’s supplier.

Finally, the components you order from an electrical contact supplier with in-house tooling expertise are likely to be more affordable than those produced by a third party. Each company in the supply chain must make a profit. It stands to reason that if you can minimize the number of parties involved, the more affordable the parts will be.

Norstan’s in-house tooling staff averages over 20 years of experience, ensuring that your electrical contact designs will be optimized and built efficiently and cost-effectively. Most of its competitors rely on external shops for machine tooling, which means they can’t be as responsive and affordable as Norstan.

When it has to be right, count on Norstan to deliver premium-quality electrical contact solutions.