How staplers are made
Most staplers have a second setting nobody uses. Turn the anvil and the staple legs fold outward, so it pulls out easily.
- stations
- 9
- things upstream
- 70
- raw sources
- 23
- steps from the ground
- 10
The short version
A desk stapler is mostly punched sheet steel plus two kinds of spring. Presses fed from a coil of steel stamp out the base, anvil, magazine and head, then bend them to shape. Springs are wound and heat-treated, rivets are forged, and workers in jigs rivet the top and bottom halves before a hinge pin joins them.
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Wind and temper springs
Wire is wound around a rod to make the coil spring that pushes staples forward. A thin strip is bent into the leaf spring, shaped like a little diving board, that pops the head back up. Heat treatment gives both their bounce.
Goes in -
Punch parts from coil
A coil feeder unrolls steel strip between a punch and a die, and each stroke shears out a flat part. The base, anvil, magazine and metal head all start this way, with no operator holding the metal.
Goes in -
Bend the blanks
Hydraulic presses fold the flat blanks into channels and boxes. Some machines punch and bend in one operation, cutting the number of setups.
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Forge rivets, cut pins
Short slugs cut from steel bar are forged into rivets with a head at one end and a hollow at the other. The hinge pin is just a length of strong, heat-treatable bar.
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Mold the covers
Plastic for the handle cap and base cover is injected into a die, cooled and popped out.
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Paint the steel
Metal parts that will show, or that could rust, are hung on racks and painted.
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Rivet each half
Workers lay the base, anvil and leaf spring into a jig that holds every hole in line, and a machine sets the rivets. The top half, with the magazine, pusher spring and head, is built the same way in its own jig.
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Pin the halves together
A hinge pin joins top and bottom so the head can swing. Next the plastic cap snaps on last, along with rubber feet that stop it skidding across a desk.
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Cycle until failure
Inspectors check that samples staple cleanly, and some units are worked over and over until something wears out. The worn part tells engineers whether it was ordinary use or a flaw in design or assembly.
Worth repeating
- The McGill Single-Stroke Staple Press of 1879, often called the first commercially successful stapler, weighed over two and a half pounds and held a single staple.
- Modern office staples are zinc-plated steel wires glued side by side and bent into a strip, and a full strip holds 210 of them.
- Swingline's sign on its old Queens factory stood 60 feet high and was a landmark for decades of commuters.
Back to the ground
Follow every input upstream and stapler starts as these 23 raw sources.
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Sources
Cite this page: "How staplers are made." Assembly Line, 2026-11-03. https://assemblyline.org/make/stapler