Tag Archives: Innovation & Technology

Is There Value in Application Engineering?

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Reprint from LINK, Summer 2021

I began my career in the fastener industry over thirty years ago as an Application Engineer. This was a great place to start, and, perhaps, the most cherished time of all my years in the industry. I suppose that Application Engineering can mean different things to different people, but within the fastener realm this role is pretty universally understood as an interface which works with the customer to provide the best fastening solution. This not only means choosing the correct fastener but also the related joint design, fastener heat treatment, finish, packaging, and any number of other design or process related decisions.

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New Flat Die Thread Rolling Technology

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Reprint from China Fastener World Magazine, Vol. 189

One of the delights of being an independent consultant is the wide assortment of people I meet and projects I get to review. Over the last ten years the two problems that I am most commonly approached about include skills development and thread rolling. In fact, I have written many articles in the last ten years and the one that I most frequently have inquiries about years later is related to problems in thread rolling. This is truly a step in the fastener manufacturing process that is ripe for innovation.

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Bi-Metallic Drill Screws

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Reprint from China Fastener World Magazine, Vol. 186

In construction applications where predrilled and tapped joint members are impractical, Drill Screws are an exceptionally versatile and helpful fastener product. Drill Screws can be easily assembled into and through a wide assortment of building materials without the need for any access to the back side of the joint. The application opportunities are abundant both for interior and exterior purposes. Drill screws are excellent resources on the interior, where they are commonly utilized to attach gypsum board, wood members, and other metal components to metal structural members and studs. Generally, the interior environment is controlled and these screws are not subject to challenging or abusive environmental conditions. Drill Screws are also highly favored by installers of metal roofs and cladding. Drill Screws provide an easy way to pierce the metal roof or cladding sheets and the underlying steel structural components without the need for any predrilling of pilot or clearance holes. Unlike interior environments, however, the exterior of the building will be subject to whatever variable environmental conditions the climate zone is known for.

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How Environmentally Friendly are Your Fastener’s Finishes?

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Reprint from China Fastener World Magazine, Vol. 49

At 9:45 a.m. on February 20, 1947 The O’Connor Electro- Plating Corporation of Los Angeles, California experienced a tremendous explosion leveling the company’s facilities and much of the surrounding four block area. The aftermath of this disaster left 17 dead, 150 injured, and 116 buildings damaged or destroyed. The cause was an unstable mixture of perchloric acid and acetic anhydride, a substance nearly as explosive as nitroglycerin, used by O’Conner in an experimental aluminum polishing process.

Although this example is perhaps one-of-a-kind and certainly not characteristic of the normal consequences of a metal finishing process gone awry, it does illustrate the crucial nature of the processes employed and the serious consequences to human safety and the environment when things go wrong. Additionally, in recent years, stories of gross industrial negligence such as the poisoning of municipal water supplies or polluting the land an industrial facility is located on or near have become all too commonplace. In fact, some of these incidents have been raised to global awareness through television documentaries and films such as “Erin Brockovich” (the story of a California town’s water supply tainted with hexavalent chromium).

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Rivets and How They are Installed

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Reprint from Fastener World Magazine, Vol. 166

In April of 1912, the “unsinkable” luxury liner Titanic would set out on her maiden voyage, only to collide within several days with an iceberg and sink in the freezing waters of the north Atlantic. The sinking of the Titanic would become, perhaps, the most iconic of all modern maritime accidents, and one that has been memorialized with multiple documentaries and blockbuster films such as James Cameron’s 1997 adaptation of the disaster.

For many years it was believed that the iceberg tore a long gash in the Titanic’s hull. Exploration and analysis of the ship and its parts, however, seem to suggest a different story. The one that emerges is of substandard iron rivets, already functioning at their margins, overstressed during the collision, breaking, and allowing hull plates to separate and seawater to flood inside.

Certainly there were many factors in-play, but, yes it seems likely that the rivets failed, dooming the “unsinkable” Titanic to catastrophic failure and so many of its passenger and crew to a watery grave.

As this story illustrates, rivets can and do play an exceptionally important role in the life and function of the products and structures in which they are used. Although other technologies have replaced many of the early uses of rivets, such as holding together ships and other large iron and steel structures, rivets are still an integral part of the manufacturing and assembly landscape and are, in fact, imperative in certain manufacturing industries such as aerospace and automotive.

This article will explore the different styles of rivets and some of the equipment used to install them.

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Trends in the Automotive Industry and How They Affect Fastener Suppliers

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Reprint from Fastener World Magazine, Vol. 165

Perhaps with the exception of the consumer electronics industry, no other high profile industry seems to embody and embrace change as much as the automotive industry. In fact, new car buyers have come to rely on the fact that the new model year will bring exciting new changes and innovations. And although it may take several years to launch a specific new model into the market, the automotive OEMS stagger releases in such a way that they are consistently releasing new models and complete model refreshers every year. As such, suppliers to automotive OEMs and their vast Tier network must be always vigilant and striving to keep up-to-date with industry advancements.

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Joining High Strength Steel and Aluminum-Friction Element Welding

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Reprint from Fastener World Magazine, Vol. 165

Perhaps one of the most difficult things to join together are thin metal sheets. The thickness is the problem because it just doesn’t allow successful joining using many traditional techniques. Industries such as automotive and aerospace which heavily rely on thin metal sheets for structure and support have traditionally been the first to adopt new joining methods that work. For example, automotive has perfected spot welding and aerospace the use of solid rivets and other special fasteners. As time has gone by, however, new, lightweight materials have been added to the mix, and traditional joining methods are quickly becoming unfeasible or obsolete.

Automotive OEMs are rapidly evolving their body-in-white designs to include a hybrid make-up of lightweight aluminum castings, sheets, or extrusions, mild steel, and high and ultra-high strength steel components. These hybrid structures magnify an already challenging joining scenario into one of much greater magnitude. In particular, the joining of dissimilar materials like aluminum and steel make most traditional fastening methods, like spot welding, unfeasible.

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Fasteners Enable Lightweighting Efforts

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Reprint from Hardware & Fastener Components Magazine, Vol. 41

Histories is full of examples of technologies whose invention long predates their actual practical introduction into society. We could say of these ideas that they were simply “before their time”. Although that would be accurate, it would probably be a fairer assessment to say that they required further maturing and the development of enabling technologies to make them work. Take, for example, one of the most iconic inventions of all-time, the electric light bulb. The earliest light bulbs were invented in the early 1800s. It would be eighty years later that Edison would discover the carbon fiber filament and create the first practical incandescent light bulbs. However, electric light wouldn’t become truly a mainstay in society for another thirty or forty years as enabling technology, such as electrical power generation, transmission and distribution, matured and became a practical reality.

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“Staying Put” – About Keeping a Threaded Fastener in-Place

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Reprint from Fastener World Magazine, Vol. 170

About twenty years ago I was travelling quite often between the United States and Europe. To make sure that my luggage arrived in one piece I purchased a medium sized, hard-sided suitcase. As I unpacked the suitcase at the conclusion of every trip I would find a loose screw or two rolling around the bottom of the suitcase. To be honest, I never could figure out exactly where these screws were coming from or how so many could come loose without the suitcase falling apart, but they clearly had loosened up from the suitcase and come out during travel. I began to worry that I was only one trip away from a major catastrophe with my bag, so that today I use a different suitcase when I travel internationally.

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“Drilling Down” – The Basics of Drill Screws

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Reprint from Fastener World Magazine, Vol. 171

Fastening thin metal sheets has presented challenges since screws were first used to connect things. If the metal sheet is very thin the connection is challenging because there isn’t enough thickness to provide sufficient thread engagement, and, thus the ability to withstand stripping. On the other hand, as sheet or gauge thickness increases self-piercing is no longer an option and either a pilot hole is required to accommodate a thread forming or cutting screw or a tapped hole must be prepared to accept a machine screw. In many instances, particularly in construction, the time it would take to prepare each joint to accept such designs is prohibitively long. What, therefore, is the solution to this dilemma?

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