[philso]

Originally Posted by FrankJ

This is starting to sound like a what is the best oil for your car debate.

Originally Posted by shewejff

The only real disadvantage to the rivets that we have come across is the difficulty of popping the 3/16" rivets. We have a lot of younger students and girls on the team. It can be difficult with a standard rivet gun. We have a huge massive rivet gun and a pneumatic rivet gun which both make it a lot easier, but the heads are a little bigger so it's hard to get in tight spaces.

There are good and bad applications for both bolts and rivets.

We have some students who love to use the socket cap 1/4 screws and will stop building when they run out rather than the hex head ones. I guess they think they are cool, or something like that. Unfortunately, they tend to not put a washer under the heads and over-torque them causing the screw heads to "crush" the aluminum. One student over-torqued the screws holding the motor in one of the new clamping gearboxes and pulled the head completely through the plastic.

We also have team members who have trouble crimping a lug onto a 12AWG wire with a ratcheting crimper. Those same team members probably also have trouble tightening a bolt/nut properly. It is a never-ending struggle to teach the team members how to properly do what they need to do.

Originally Posted by JamesCH95

We use PEM (cinch) nuts and Riv-Nuts frequently on our robot. We love blind fasteners because assembly is faster than a fastener+nut and we can put mounting points in locations traditionally unavailable to faster+nut combos. We can put blind threads into thin material and thick materials with ease. Everything can be quickly disassembled. And, unlike tapping material directly, damaged threads can easily and quickly be replaced. At least as quickly as rivets.

I would like to get our CAD guys to design using these. The difficulty is with installing them properly without the proper equipment (like what we have at work). The best may be to find a sheet metal sponsor who can install them properly. The downside with the cinch nuts is that a ham-fisted team members can inadvertently "punch one out" leading to a hard-to-fix situation since they can be installed in inaccessible locations.