×
INTELLIGENT WORK FORUMS
FOR ENGINEERING PROFESSIONALS

Log In

Come Join Us!

Are you an
Engineering professional?
Join Eng-Tips Forums!
  • Talk With Other Members
  • Be Notified Of Responses
    To Your Posts
  • Keyword Search
  • One-Click Access To Your
    Favorite Forums
  • Automated Signatures
    On Your Posts
  • Best Of All, It's Free!
  • Students Click Here

*Eng-Tips's functionality depends on members receiving e-mail. By joining you are opting in to receive e-mail.

Posting Guidelines

Promoting, selling, recruiting, coursework and thesis posting is forbidden.

Students Click Here

Jobs

Design of rivets to fasten plastics?

Design of rivets to fasten plastics?

Design of rivets to fasten plastics?

(OP)
I'm considering using a rivet to hold two plastic moldings together, and to act as a pivot between the two halves. Can anyone point me to a resource that would help me engineer such a rivet? Material would probably be brass, main load that worries me is tensile. I'm thinking that a shouldered rivet, with a semi tubular clinch feature would work well - but what is the tensile load that I can expect such a rivet to withstand?

Thanks!

RE: Design of rivets to fasten plastics?

It would probably help if you would provide more detail about your requirement. Diameter, thickness, type of plastic, expected loads, etc.

Meanwhile, I have used eyelets for fastening plastic parts and allowing them to pivot. Even for quite small sizes the plastic will fail before the eyelet fails.

Look up Stimpson, give them a call, You will find them quite helpful.

RE: Design of rivets to fasten plastics?

Yes more info is needed. However care should be taken to avoid the high stress concentration inherent in most riveting techniques. Large dia. head and reinforcing washers are good to distribute stresses, and all sharp corners should be broken or radiussed. The sholes should provide at least a .010in (.254 mm) clearance on the rivet shank to ease assembly and compenstate to tolerances and coefficient of thermal expansion. Aluminum rivets are preferred over steel, since the AL. will more readily deform under hight stress. Using a shouldered rivet is a good idea and will also keep control stresses by limiting the compressive forces tat can be applied to the plastic part.

RE: Design of rivets to fasten plastics?

(OP)
Thanks for the feedback. I'll be specifying a standard semi-tubular rivet, clinched over a washer + a short length of tube + a washer to give me the pivot I'm after. But I'm still having problems getting even approximate figures for the tensile failure performance of semi-tubular rivets. I'll have to get hold of some & test them myself, unless someone knows of a handy website or booklet.

Red Flag This Post

Please let us know here why this post is inappropriate. Reasons such as off-topic, duplicates, flames, illegal, vulgar, or students posting their homework.

Red Flag Submitted

Thank you for helping keep Eng-Tips Forums free from inappropriate posts.
The Eng-Tips staff will check this out and take appropriate action.

Reply To This Thread

Posting in the Eng-Tips forums is a member-only feature.

Click Here to join Eng-Tips and talk with other members!


Resources