Clinch staples and method of manufacturing and applying clinch staples

Abstract

A clinch type staple has a U-shaped configuration with a pair of legs extending generally perpendicularly from a base portion of the staple with the outside surfaces of the distal ends of the legs being bevelled. The legs of the staple lie in spaced apart planes that are parallel to one another, but are angularly offset from one another in order to insure that the legs will not contact or interfere with each other as they are clinched into a workpiece. A plurality of such clinch staples can be manufactured into an assembly of clinch staples. The method of making such an assembly of clinch staples includes advancing a plurality of wires in parallel side-by-side relation in a flat planar array and adhering the wires to one another. A blank, severed from an end of the formed array, includes a plurality of side-by-side wire segments of equal length extending parallel to one another in a first direction. The severing of the wires is accomplished along a cutting line that is inclined by a bias angle from a perpendicular to the first direction. The blank is bent along two bending lines to form a U-shaped stick of clinch staples with the legs extending perpendicularly from a base or bight portion of the staples. The two bending lines are parallel to the cutting line so that the legs of the formed staples will be offset angularly from each other.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.