EFS features in Fasten.it with the story of a long bolt. In its Autumn 2026 issue, the trade magazine Let’s Fasten.it dedicates page 36 to a 560 mm M20 square head bolt in property class 8.8 for structural steelwork. The article explores what it means to rely on the right supplier when the first attempt fails.
The first batch, made by another supplier, never reached site. The bolts had been quenched and tempered horizontally, as is standard practice for short fasteners. However, at this length, several shanks bent beyond the straightness tolerance specified on the drawing.
The customer was left with an unusable batch and an order that had to start again, which was already running late.
A long bolt needs a production cycle designed for its length.
EFS – European Fasteners Solutions took over the order and reorganised the entire production cycle. The 45×29 mm square head is hot forged. Quenching and tempering is carried out with the bolts standing vertically, to limit distortion of the shank. The shank below the head is turned to meet the tight tolerances of its seat, and the 115 mm thread is rolled.
Each stage was entrusted to a specialist Italian workshop, using raw material of European origin, and checked before the next one was authorised.
Why the customer turned to EFS
The original problem had nothing to do with a workshop’s ability to carry out a single operation. What was missing was someone looking at the bolt as a whole and anticipating how its length would affect heat treatment.
That is the role EFS plays as main contractor. It knows which workshops can handle each stage on non-standard components, how to sequence them, and how to manage inspections from one step to the next. For the customer, this means a single point of contact responsible for the whole supply chain. If something does not add up, there is no need to mediate between forger, heat treater and turner: EFS takes care of it.
On supplies like this, much of the work lies in foreseeing where the cycle might go wrong, before it happens.
Read the full story of EFS on Fasten.it and the long bolt in Let’s Fasten.it To find out more about each operation, read Custom square head bolt: why forging, machining and thread rolling are combined.
