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looking for weld nuts, but for rivets

Cole2534

Diamond
Joined
Sep 10, 2010
Location
Oklahoma City, OK
I have a customer wanting a very low profile mounting option (not showing on the front side, and very minimal on the rear) and we originally spec'd screws going into weld nuts but they visually stand out too much. I was cruising McMaster and I found pre-colored rivets and they would work perfectly but the rivets can't protrude through the front surface so I was wondering if there was such a thing as a weld-nut, but the opposite.

In my mind, this is a piece of weldable rod with a counterbore on one side and then a 3/16" thruhole. Weld the C/B'd side to the item and then pass the rivet through the hole, pop it, and ta da. A tube nut would work in a pinch, but I need these 50-100 at a time so $1/ea is more than I'd like to pay.

Obviously I could make these, but surely they're cheaper elsewhere should an item exist. And if they don't exist, I'm going to post an RFQ in the MFG forum.
 
I'm sorry but your post is a little hard to understand.

If my take is correct, you want the rivets heads flush with the surface. If that's the case why not just use ordinary weld nuts of a size that you could expand the rivet into the threads and mount the weld nuts behind an oversize hole in the sheet that would act as the counterbore. There are thin head rivets if needed. AFAIK there is no such thing as a counterbored "weld nut" with a non-threaded hole.
 
I'm sorry but your post is a little hard to understand.

If my take is correct, you want the rivets heads flush with the surface. If that's the case why not just use ordinary weld nuts of a size that you could expand the rivet into the threads and mount the weld nuts behind an oversize hole in the sheet that would act as the counterbore. There are thin head rivets if needed. AFAIK there is no such thing as a counterbored "weld nut" with a non-threaded hole.

Damn, because that's exactly what I want, ideally a 1/2" in height.

One of the downsides to the weld nut idea is they are typically very thing wall and thus require a tight fitting hole. I'd like to have the holes 1/16" over nominal to ease manufacturing and that just become a through hole to a weld-nut.

I'll play with expanding rivets into the weld nut threads tonight and see what happens.
 
Airplane "skin" is riveted on. The aluminum is countersunk and a rivet of the appropriate taper is then used. The result is strong and flush and doesn't at all look welded.

So I suggest tapered rivets.

metalmagpie
 
Can you say how thick the sheet materials are that need to be connected? I'm not entirely getting the picture. Studs or aircraft rivets as discussed above are fine choices but for 20 to 16 Gauge you might consider the more exotic PEM Spotfast Rivets https://www.pemnet.com/fastening_products/pdf/sfdata.pdf They do require you have access to both sides of the part at the same time but I've used them and they are pretty tidy.
 
I should have posted these pics initially, the back plane and lettering are 11ga sheet. They didn't like how the nuts caused a shadow so I was off to find better solutions.

I needed-
1) nothing visible from the front
2) nothing noticeable from the rear
3) a permanent fastener
4) a standoff of ~1\2"

I ended up machining some doo-dads (100 of them) to fit my means so that I can use a colored, large head rivet to cover all of my bases. The work is at powdercoat now, Ill post pics when it returns.


01aabd5254f71799f8f8fd708d6e9b9b.jpg
dd36193a65192d39051ae1e98a4999b5.jpg


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What about sex bolts? That way you can just screw them all together with thin pan heads.

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