Ribbit Rivet...

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

Good news! that may not be a downside. Some teams (I think 148/217) have reported that drilling out a rivet and reriveting is faster than loosening and tightening a bolt.

I am skeptical, since tightening an accessible bolt only requires positioning the tools and making a turn or two. This could only be faster if you have a lot of nice sharp 1/4" bits around and the nut or bolt head is positioned such that it's highly difficult or impossible to reach. Rivets are definitely faster for blind assemblies.

... Upon further examination of the kitbot frame (57 has yet to use it) just about every nut on there looks difficult to reach even on first assembly with nothing in the way. So I can actually easily believe that rivets are more maintainable for the kitbot. Plus, it's not like there's not a ton of places to put in extra rivets for good measure. I'll be considering this now...

[Gary Dillard]

Have you tried this? My first impression is that the diameters aren't going to be right. Normally holes for .250 fasteners are not .250 in diameter, they are a standard clearance hole (in aerospace we use .286 plus or minus .005 for structure) to accomodate machining and position tolerances for parts that are drilled in detail. I don't know what they are on the kitbot - I would guess they are punched so probably even larger size and position tolerance. For rivets, the holes are usually line drilled at assembly, not in detail, close tolerance (pretty close to .250) and immediately assembled either with the actual rivet or temporary fasteners ("Cleco's") to keep all the holes aligned. This is because a rivet depends on interference with the hole when it is bucked (swaged). If the hole is too large, you will not get the shear capability, and tensile capability will be next to nothing.