The best way to kill a social occasion is to invite me to it. And say the magic words. "What do you know about fasteners Ron?" That will launch me off on a long lecture on the topic and one by one and in groups, people will leave until there is nobody there except me -not even the person who asked the silly question will remain. If there are any Engineers in the group they stay and we have a really good discussion. But otherwise not.
It is probably one of the saddest facts in the universe that Canadians have an abysmal knowledge about fasteners. I would guess that a full 50% don't even know what they are. Another 25% won't have any idea which fastener should be used for a specific application. The next 20% will be unable to identify the grade of a fastener and the last 5% may either understand fasteners or know where to get the right information on them. I am being very generous. I suspect the knowledgeable group would be less than 1% of the population. "Who cares" and "so what" you say!
Fasteners are critical in modern life. They hold most of the objects around us together. You can find them in your car, truck, home, computer, aircraft, sports equipment, just about anything you see will have fasteners in them. "So what" you say.
Here is the problem. Fasteners come in various grades and at various costs and in various quality. Each application has an optimum fastener that can be used on it. If you use the wrong one the item that is being held together could come apart. It should be starting to slowly sink in now.
Yes here we have an entire country that is basically stupid when it comes to fasteners and lets just consider what could happen:
- 1. the wrong fasteners could be used in items
- 2. the wrong fasteners could be used in repairing items
- 3. the manufacturer could use a cheaper fastener that won't work as well to save some money on production
- 4. the technician could use the incorrect torque setting for the fastener as a result of Canada maintaining both the SAE and metric system (please view our page on the metric system and the problems in Canada. Also note that torque settings apply to lubricated bolts. There are also torque settings for non lubricated bolts and to make it even more incomprehensible there are different torque settings for different types of lubricant. The bottom line is that you can have 6 torque settings for a bolt. And it even gets worse because with some bolts you need to recheck the bolt settings, torque down the bolts in a specific pattern and in critical applications at a specific temperature. Good luck!
Lets look at an example.
We will consider the standard automotive grade 5 bolt vs the grade 8 bolt. The two main measurements to be concerned with are shear strength and tension strength. In a given application either one could be a factor. Here are the differences in strength:
bolt size 3/8" GRADE 5 GRADE 8
TENSION 9888 pounds 12360 pounds
SHEAR 8280 pounds 10050 pounds
As you can see there is a significant amount of difference here. Often on a steering box a manufacturer will use a grade 8 bolt. I have seen them break. In fact one broke on me on a FORD van!! (remember FORD - QUALITY IS JOB 1- bullshit) What if some complete dolt -not understanding fasteners - decided to put a grade 5 bolt in there. I sure as hell wouldn't want to be in your car going down the freeway at 70mph with a weaker grade 5 bolt in my steering system.
It gets worse.
There is a grading system on bolts and they can be made out of various materials. Stainless steel is one. There are several grades of stainless steel. Stainless tends to be an expensive item. So enter the fine folks "we can do it cheaper " from China. What did you want? 316 stainless "And you want it cheap? Not a problem -here you go! The only problem is that when the Chinese stainless goes to the lab to see if it is 316 stainless they find out its not.
China has been pumping out cheap, sub standard fasteners into the world market for years. I don't trust them. I would not want to buy Chinese fasteners and use them in a high performance application like an aircraft or boat or car.
Chinese fasteners have found their way into our houses and so the entire quality of our home construction has been jeopardized. At last count there was only ONE nail company left in the USA that made the common sinker (normal type nail) and ALL the rest came from China. This is bullshit. If we can't make a common sinker in North America we may as well pack up and quit.
How would you like to spend your life savings for a new house and then find out they used cheap, low quality Chinese nails to hold it together? If you bought a house made in the last ten years its likely that Chinese fasteners are holding it together...for the time being. How would you like to be up at 35,000 feet knowing that the fasteners in the wings were made in Bejing by the fly by night nail and screw you company. NOT!
And its not entirely the fault of the Chinese either. The consumer constantly wants cheaper products and emphasizes price over quality. So these demands are passed through to the distributors and wholesales back to the factories in China or other low labour rate area and they continue to exert constant pressure on them to produce an even cheaper quality product. The factories cut back everywhere they can including their labour costs and minimal benefits to workers and the quality of raw materials used in the product. The result of all this is too often a substandard product and there is no quality control procedure in the delivery country to ensure that the product is up to standard. There is nothing wrong with the Chinese worker they are efficient, productive and do a good job. The problem lies with the resource inputs which are cut back to ensure a lower price. The melamine in milk disaster is the latest example of this.
Who do we have to thank for this.? Absolute and complete stupidity on the part of the consumer and their government regulatory bodies. Total incompetence from our media. Greed and desperation from our builders who will buy cheap components of poor quality to help the bottom line. Its all bullshit folks. You can't expect entire nations to work at slave labour rates and then produce products of high quality. The bad karma comes back at you. Then when you mechanic or repairman is repairing that mechanical device of yours and he goes to turn the fastener with his wrench the head snaps off it. He then needs to drill out the fastener and sometimes re-tap the hole and you get presented with a huge bill. The reality is that often mechanical devices are judged to be unfixable and you simply buy a new one. All because of cheap low quality fasteners!
And just to get you all upset I remember reading about tire dudes over torquing GM steel rims and bending the wheels. Here is a good article on over torquing wheel studs that will make you cringe.
And if we ever meet PLEASE do not ask me about fasteners. Thanks! I know at this point your are all turned on to fasteners so here are some excellent information sources for you right now! Be the first in your coffee group to understand and talk about stud failure. That will grab their attention!
One of our objectives with this website is to enlighten and entertain. We bring forward facts to the public which are not generally available in the media and we do it without any commercial, political or special interest spin. Where we see a problem we try and fix it. As an example we saw a problem with winter driving in Canada so we published a Canadian Winter Driver's Handbook where we prove to you using simple math why it is impossible to avoid hitting a moose on the highway at night. On this page on fasteners we introduce you to a huge problem in Canada today -the lack of awareness of fasteners and what they do. All these problems have solutions but first you need to understand that there is a problem. Check out some of the articles below -it's not just me.
INTERESTING LINKS ON FASTENERS
Bolt Science - do you tighten the nut or the bolt -there is a difference and this is a good treatment of the topic!
Eng Tips Forms - titanium bolt torque
Brikksen stainless steel metric bolts and fasteners - a supplier with lots of useful info on fasteners
Ron Alexander -article about Aircraft fasteners - excellent info well done Ron!
Bolt Science -a very interesting article from the UK on wheel stud failure and the sad thing here is that most tire guys in Canada would have a hard time understanding the article because they just do not have the technical knowledge yet are installing tires all day.
Wheel Check - a Canadian made product that indicates at a glance if you wheel nuts are loose- how cool is that! And could you tell me why these aren't standard on all vehicles??? (especially trucks!)
Torque settings SAE and Metric Just to show you how complicated and confusing this can get when you maintain two measurement systems like canada does
Forensic Metallurgy Douglas Townsend Phd, PE from Maryland -a very interesting website on cases where metal failures caused accidents and injuries.
TapRoot Website showing how accidents are investigated to show causes. Some excellent pictures and info here
back to the index for over 100 more interesting topics!
