Fastening, Joining & Assembly

Creating a lasting fastener would mean the producers want their products to last a long time they would not break and need to be replaced every few years.

Is this a change from Planned Obsolescence of years past?

This must be an "American" philosophy as no-one I have known in 45 years of Engineering (in various guises) has ever designed a fastener not to last at least the life of the product. Surely everything that breaks down prematurely creates a bad image for the producer?

Yes, there were mistakes in fastener design - body trims fell off Minis, Lancia engines dropped off, Vauxall's chrome bits chipped easily, etc, etc, but most of this was due to naivety and lack of information.

In my role as a Technical Consultant for a fastener supplier I have observed that things have moved on recently and most Automotive designers take account of the fasteners at a relatively early stage. Some other branches of Engineering are not so enlightened, I'm afraid, and do regard fasteners as a necessary evil and only consult us quite late in the design stages.

Keeps me in a job, I suppose!

In the 1950's Engineering mags use to discuss just how far they could go in making a product that would break fast and still keep the customer coming back to buy more.

Feeding the interest machine.

In case you don't know what I mean watch this simple video. It is the story of Stuff!!

http://www.pinkyshow.org/archives/presents/080410_stuff/

Hi M Daniels,

I have been trying in vain to find a structural (for lack of a better term) fastener to mechanically fasten 2" thick steel wall panels together. The steel wall panels are hollow, except for some vertical stiffeners spaced equally within the wall panel. The panels typically measure around 36" long by 108" high by 2" thick. These panels are shipped loose to the job site. Both vertical edges of the wall panels have a dadoed design to mate the steel panels. However, this dadoed joint just provides a nice, nested joint and provides no interlock between the panels. When the panels are nested together at these joints during field-assembly, the joints are then stitch-welded to provide a secure, structurally tight vertical joint.

Is there a fastener which could be placed within the wall panel assembly, before it is sealed up at the factory?

I envision some kind of structural fastener, installed and welded within the panel, at the vertical joints. The exposed end of the fastener would stick out of the dadoed joint and be perpendicular to the joint. Then one would be able to slide the adjacent panel, which has pre-drilled holes on its vertical dadoed joint, onto the exposed fastener, thus providing a secure joint not requiring any welding. Of course the fastener would have to be some type of steel snap-together design, which could not be removed. Note that the top and bottom of the panels are secured into a continuous 10 ga. steel ceiling and floor track system. The panels are stitch-welded to these tracks.

A drawing is attached to hopefully illustrate the typical vertical joint design.

Thank you to all!

Hi Mach1gtx,

Perhaps this http://www.bighead.co.uk/poppit/index.html is the type of thing you're looking for? If not, the company may be able to help with a special design if your quantity requirement is sufficient to merit the design work.

Scott,

How many of these fasteners will you need? My company can handle the purchase and export/import of special products of this nature along with technical support (me!) if required. (We purchase from the Far East so would need to handle a fair quantity to merit our involvement).

As for the other thing.... the feeling is: Bush = idiot; Obama - let's wait and see. I just hope he can become universally popular and not be the subject of an assassination attempt!

Recession biting big-style over here. Pound falling against Dollar (and other currencies, for that matter). Could be huge problems if something doesn't change soon.

Good luck with your project.

Malcolm

Hi Malcolm,

Thanks for responding so quickly! I had just emailed a request to the company that you had previously recommended, when I noticed your response after that. Would it be okay to email you the same information? It has a rather lengthy explanation of what I need, in order to avoid sending out a lot of detailed drawings. However, there is one crude drawing attachment that hopefully illustrates my design intent.

Hopefully, the new President-elect can really change some things, but he has more on his plate than any other. He seems to provide some hope for us here and hopefully for the rest of the free world. What a record too, it took Bush only 8 years to really exacerbate all of the worldwide political, military and economical problems in one fell swoop!

Look forward in hearing from you Malcolm,

Scott

Scott,

I would certainly try the products I suggested as they are off-the-shelf, so there would be no addition to the price for design expertise. However, yes, send the drawings to me at malcolm.daniels@jetpress.com. How many will you need?

Malcolm,

I think everything will be found in the forthcoming email to you, including approximate quantities. Thank you!

Scott

I used to work for a plastic fastener manufacturer (90+ different polymers, both machined and molded depending on the plastic) in the 90's that specialized in products for the semiconductor wafer fabrication industry.

Engineers specifying fasteners for DI-water and other harsh-liquid applications for semicon-apps would often ask for and receive machined prototypes, before making a big-dollar commitment to a metal-mold and the resulting production run of thousands of fasteners.

So at least in the plastics world, there was some forethought before using these fasteners in a scaled-up production run and integrating them into industrial products. I suspect the "metal-head" specifying engineers out there were doing the same, for critical applications, and were consulting with the IFI handbook like I was.

-april05

Fasteners, Fastener Engineering, Fastener Application, Fastener Design and Fastener Purchasing should all be part of any Engineering program in college. We graduate thousands of kids with NO experience in any of the subject noted above and then send them out into the world to design or re-design products, but they do not know how to put them together (assembly them).

Great source to locate fasteners is the American Fastener Source Guide located on the American Fastener Journal website www.fastenerjournal.com.

Good luck

I can almost guarantee the "guest" posting above is Mike himself, (from the website he linked to, click it).