Tag Archives: Automotive

Is There Value in Application Engineering?

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Reprint from LINK, Summer 2021

I began my career in the fastener industry over thirty years ago as an Application Engineer. This was a great place to start, and, perhaps, the most cherished time of all my years in the industry. I suppose that Application Engineering can mean different things to different people, but within the fastener realm this role is pretty universally understood as an interface which works with the customer to provide the best fastening solution. This not only means choosing the correct fastener but also the related joint design, fastener heat treatment, finish, packaging, and any number of other design or process related decisions.

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A “Galling Development” – What Every Distributor Should Know about Thread Galling

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Reprint from LINK, Spring 2021

A number of year’s back I was engaged by a Midwestern distributor to review an application problem that had intermittently plagued one of their more important customers. Upon meeting with their customer, I learned the problem occurred during the assembly of a stainless steel Nylon insert lock nut to a like stainless steel screw. Although this was a sporadic problem, when it occurred the customer would experience assembly difficulties like nuts that were very hard to turn, nuts that reached installation torque levels before seating, and in the worst cases, nuts that became totally frozen (seized) in mid-run down position, often breaking the screw in torsion.

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A Primer on Fastener Marking

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Reprint from LINK, Summer 2020

A number of years ago I owned an old John Deere tractor that was clearly showing its age. As I tooled around my yard cutting the grass I noticed that the engine was laboring more and more and it was consistently blowing oily blue smoke from the exhaust. I knew it was time to either retire the tractor or rebuild the engine. Although I had never done it before, I decided I would try my hand at rebuilding the engine.

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10 Things to Know About Automotive Fasteners

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Reprint from China Fastener World Magazine, Vol. 45

During my first twenty five years in the fastener industry I worked for a fastener manufacturer that focused primarily on automotive fasteners. Several years into my tenure I had the opportunity to work on a project outside of the automotive industry, with a large computer and peripherals manufacturer. After many months of project work it was obvious that the project was dead-on-arrival. This was an uncustomary loss and as I reflected on the reasons for this, the one that stood out above all the others was that we were simply not equipped to support the needs unique to this industry segment. We were very capable of providing the necessary application engineering and had the manufacturing capabilities, but we were too ingrained in our own paradigms and lacked important industry specific knowledge so that we failed to execute properly to meet the customer ́s needs.

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Joining High Strength Steel and Aluminum-Friction Element Welding

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Reprint from Fastener World Magazine, Vol. 165

Perhaps one of the most difficult things to join together are thin metal sheets. The thickness is the problem because it just doesn’t allow successful joining using many traditional techniques. Industries such as automotive and aerospace which heavily rely on thin metal sheets for structure and support have traditionally been the first to adopt new joining methods that work. For example, automotive has perfected spot welding and aerospace the use of solid rivets and other special fasteners. As time has gone by, however, new, lightweight materials have been added to the mix, and traditional joining methods are quickly becoming unfeasible or obsolete.

Automotive OEMs are rapidly evolving their body-in-white designs to include a hybrid make-up of lightweight aluminum castings, sheets, or extrusions, mild steel, and high and ultra-high strength steel components. These hybrid structures magnify an already challenging joining scenario into one of much greater magnitude. In particular, the joining of dissimilar materials like aluminum and steel make most traditional fastening methods, like spot welding, unfeasible.

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Automotive Cold Headed Components

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Reprint from Fastener World Magazine, Vol. 176

The other day I received an email from an individual at one of the companies that I work with asking me if I was aware of any industry standards for wheel studs. I had to think about this for a bit and ultimately replied that I was unaware of any formal, industrywide document pertaining to this product. I went on to explain that in my experience, although many wheel stud designs were likely similar from one automotive OEM or supplier to another, that each OEM or supplier had their own special “spin” on part design and functionality. The result is a wide body of ‘Tribal Knowledge” on such parts but a dearth of formal, industrywide standards or know-how.

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Heat Treating Automotive Fasteners

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Reprint from Fastener World Magazine, Vol. 175

About twenty years ago I was working with an automotive foundation brake supplier when catastrophe struck. One of this company’s calipers utilized a Collette Style Pin brake caliper design. These calipers operate by sliding along a two piece pin system. There is a Collette Pin with a tapped hole in the head and a Mounting Bolt. The Mounting Bolt connects the face of the Collette Pin to the back side of the Piston Body Flange, providing unfettered access for the caliper bracket to slide along these pins when the brake is functioning.

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Automotive Platings and Coatings

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Reprint from Fastener World Magazine, Vol. 172

When I started in the fastener industry thirty years ago, our automotive customers were significantly divided in how they approached the platings and coatings used on fasteners. The spectrum ranged on one end from OEMs that had only a handful of choices to the other end of the spectrum where it seemed there was an option for every engineer that had been convinced by a plating chemical supplier that they had the best mousetrap. In the intervening years this has mostly changed, so that today, even though each automotive OEM still has their own set of standards and preferred finishes, the selection has tightened up considerably so that all the OEMS are now doing relatively similar things.

To understand how we have arrived at the place we are today, one has to understand a number of trends and occurrences that have either helped or forced the industry to go in a particular direction. Most of the rest of this article will focus on these discrete events to assist us in understanding the landscape today.

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So You Want to be an Automotive Fastener Supplier

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Reprint from Fastener World Magazine, Vol. 168

Although every model automobile is different, the average automobile contains several thousand fasteners. The total number is comprised of screws, bolts, nuts, washers, clips, and specialized, engineered specials and variants of all the following. The assortment and variety of different fasteners is impressive by any standard. One would think that because of this variety gaining entry into the automotive fastener market would be an easy accomplishment. This assumption, however, would be incorrect. In fact, the reality is very different; becoming a supplier to automotive customers is generally an onerous task and a monumental accomplishment.

To understand why it is so difficult one has to understand some of the differences between the automotive fastener market and all others. At the forefront is an understanding of fastener “standards”.

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Characterization of Flow Drill Screwdriving Process Parameters on Joint Quality

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From SAE International, September 2014

Abstract: A state of the art proprietary method for aluminum-to-aluminum joining in the automotive industry is Resistance Spot Welding. However, with spot welding (1) structural performance of the joint may be degraded through heat-affected zones created by the high temperature thermal joining process, (2) achieving the double-sided access necessary for the spot welding electrodes may limit design flexibility, and (3) variability with welds leads to production inconsistencies. Self-piercing rivets have been used before; however they require different rivet/die combinations depending on the material being joined, which adds to process complexity. In recent years the introductions of screw products that combine the technologies of friction drilling and thread forming have entered the market. These types of screw products do not have these access limitations as through-part connections are formed by one-sided access using a thermo-mechanical flow screwdriving process with minimal heat. The friction drilling, thread forming process, hereto referred to as “FDS” is an automated continuous process that allows multi-material joining by utilizing a screw as both the tool and the fastener. The process uses the friction caused by the rotating screw to pierce and extrude the material. Threads are then created in this formed extrusion which allows the fastener to be screwdriven into the parts. A final torquing then securely clamps together the sheets of material. This study explores the quality design space as represented by resultant joint geometry as a function of the critical process parameters of fastener force and drilling speed. Feasible design space regions are explored to determine how process parameters affect joint geometry, and strength testing performed to validate the findings. (Article No.: SAE 2014-01-2241)

Available for Purchase on SAE International: http://papers.sae.org/2014-01-2241/