I worked in a factory with several 4 slide machines, the oldest was over 100 years old and is now in a museum, they were mostly working with wire not strip.
The idea was that the wire fed through a die where it is cut off but the cutter pinched the wire to hold it and push it against a mating tool, the next two tools further pushed the wire round the centre tool last op was for the centre tool to withdraw upwards and the part would fall away.
We made the little triangles that connect a basin plug to its chain, the job was simple enough to make 3 at a time using 3 coils of wire one above the other, with a cycle time of 5 seconds, production was considerable.
Other products were wire rings, hooks cotter pins etc. with some alteration we also made chain both oval link and jack chain(figure of eight twisted chain)
An example of a strip product is the liner used in bayonet cap lamp sockets.
4 slides, like cam screw machines were ideal for high volume simple work but need special tools for:each job.
