BDE-Fastening & Joining

Nonthreaded fasteners often are simple designs, but they solve a wide range of fastening problems.

Welding allows parts to coalesce along their contacting surfaces by applying heat, pressure, or both, and often adding a filler material.

Many applications require joining metals to ceramics, such as sealing electrodes to glass enclosures for light bulbs.

A clinch nut is a solid nut with a knurled or smooth shank or pilot projecting from one end.

Used primarily as safety nuts, these nuts are slotted to receive a cotter pin or wire which passes through a drilled hole in the bolt and locks it.

Clinching is a combination of drawing and forming that locks together layers of sheet metal.

Brazing joins parts by heating them to more than 840°F and applying a filler metal that has a melting temperature below that of the base metal.

The material most commonly used for weld fasteners is low-carbon steel such as 1010.

Single-thread-engaging nuts are formed by stamping a thread-engaging impression in a flat piece of metal.

Externally threaded fasteners with locking devices use the same techniques as locknuts.

Also known as snap rings, retaining rings provide a removable shoulder to locate, retain, or lock components on shafts or in bores and housings.

Though the uncertainties involved make exact predictions impossible, designers can solve many problems based on past experience, trial and error, tests, and the like.

A variety of these common fasteners can be used.

Parts can be fastened by a rivet if flat parallel surfaces exist for both the rivet clinch and head, and there is adequate space for the rivet driver during clinching.

Fasteners smaller than 3/32 in.