[Amps] Rivet nuts]

[Paul Whatton]

Hi Will

Put your nuts in the vice and squeeze them I say! That shows them who's 
boss! It's fast and it's dirty but it works. I've now fitted about 30 in 
the current RF deck project.

We'll see further down the thread if you can fix this one. But don't get 
too screwed up trying, fitting those things can drive you nuts!

More seriously.....

The only reference I could find to the tool was short listing in their 
pdf catalogue (17Mb download). But no price or clues (pictures) to how 
it works. I guess there must be some fixed grip for the rivnut attached 
to the main body of the drill, or maybe screwed in behind the chuck? Or 
maybe the whole assembly replaces the chuck?

On one auto enthusiast web page a guy describes how he used a piece of 
flat metal with a hole in it as a grip, put a screw in the rivnut and 
pulled it up with just an ordinary screwdriver. He was fitting a quite 
chunky steel rivnut. It beats me how he did that, he must have much 
better developed biceps than me because I tried that on the puny 
aluminium M4 ones I'm using and it sure didn't work for me!

BTW it also crossed my mind that they might be a neat way of building 
VHF/UHF yagis? A rivnut each side of the boom, thread the end of the 
element halves and maybe apply a dab of Locktite to be really safe.

Regards

Paul

Will Matney wrote:
> Paul,
>
> That actually hit me early this morning after I had typed that and I started looking into it. What a person needs is first a thrust washer. A bronze washer might not do here, but a minature one using ball bearings would. Then you have to have something between it and the nut you can hold from spinning as the thrust washer would be between it and the chuck. I thought of using a piece of steel rod that was drilled through the center just a shade bigger than the screw. The tube would need to be about 3 inches long so a person could hold it with their fingers from spinning. Then, the threaded rod would stick out of it maybe 1/2" to accomodate different length rivet-nuts. What you would do is place the nut on the thread, put it in the hole, hold on to the tube, apply inwards pressure with the drill to press against the nut, then zip it in with the drill/screwgun.
>
> The only problem with the above is one will need to do some lathe work to make the tube. Another thing comes up here also. What about the different thread diameters? Would you make one tube each to fit each threaded rod? A person could get more extravagant with the machining and make a rod to go in the drill, and on out the front of the tube which had a holder for one diameter in the end and a setscrew would hold it in from turning. Then each threaded rod would have to be machined out of a piece of solid round so that each size thread had the same shank to mount in the end for the setscrew to hold in. That takes a good bit of machining, and some folks can't do that. However, yo use the first design, not only would you have to change the tube, you would have to change the thrust washer each time because the threaded rod size changes.
>
> I'm going to set down today and look into this more and see what's needed. I'll let you know what I come up with. By the way, I looked at the one website, and never did find their drill driver listed.
>
> Best,
>
> Will
>