Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris is me
If you end up using rivets again, for critical areas like a drive chassis, where you don't expect to ever be removing the rivets, high strength aluminum rivets stay very firm over time and are just as light as regular rivets. They aren't that difficult to remove if you have to - you just need to center punch the rivet hole as the mandrel tends to break flush with the top of the rivet, rather than slightly inside the rivet.
The other benefit of these pricier high strength rivets is that they are rated to work in holes going all the way up to .201". That way, you can cut holes to .196" or so and use a tight #10 bolt clearance hole that doubles as a rivet hole.
The extra cost of these rivets isn't insignificant though - http://www.mcmaster.com/#aluminum-rivets/=x9kpy0 |
We've ran regular 3/16" rives in .201 holes for years w/o issue (for anyone reading this and thinking you NEED high strength to handle the larger hole size).
It seems ironic to me that a robotics competition would come down to human error, which is precisely what the field of robotics attempts to prevent. - David8696 [more] 
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