Rivnut Tool

[bowmanb]

I have extensive experience with rivnuts from one of my former lives as an instrumentation installer. They work great with proper installation and care, but I have always been reluctant to introduce them to our FRC team because of this one problem-

If you ever manage to break one loose in a blind hole it can be a real bear to get the screw out of the hole.

The odds of this happening increase as the odds of incorrect installation increases. When I finally broke down last season and introduced them (our chassis design last year made our bumpers hard to attach/detach without them) I trained a special crew to use them and I demonstrated the spin-out problem and how to avoid it. It requires a combination of correct installation of the proper size and avoiding over-torquing the fasteners (I find that often teenage boys don't know their own strength!).