[MrForbes]

Since our robot this year is half made of wood, we didn't use a lot of rivets. We use a few wood screws to hold aluminum parts to wood, and some machine screws and nuts to hold other aluminum parts to wood. We have a few places where thin aluminum is attached to other thin aluminum parts, these are riveted.

We usually don't use locknuts on anything that may need to be disassembled for repair or maintenance, because it can take so long to get the screw out and back in. Instead, we depend on maintenance to keep nuts tight.

We don't use aircraft type rivets...if we did, we probably wouldn't have any trouble with riveted connections getting loose. We use mostly materials and supplies that are locally available, and that means hardware store or building supply, since there are no industrial supply places within errand distance.

When thinking of the engineering of fasteners, we usually think of the robot as a prototype, and not as a saleable commercial product.