Monday 25th Feb 2019
Riveting is one of the oldest forms of fastening.
Solid rivets have been found dating back to the Bronze Age (ended 800BC)
You will have seen rivets hidden in plain site on bridges, ships, Aircraft and Trucks to name a few common applications.
They are also common throughout your home, if you have double glazing then you will probably have our rivets in the hinges.
Rivets are formed by a process called Cold Forging, this process produces no waste as the head of the rivet is formed by upsetting the shank of the rivet. This ensures the grain flow of the material remains in-tact thus strengthening the fastener.
The rivets are inserted in the material to be fixed together and "set” by deforming the end of the shank of the rivet to product a permanent fix.
The more popular, semi-tubular rivet is set in a similar way but require a lot less setting load and provides a "Clinch” fix which pre-stresses the material.
Many engineers are unaware of the advantages or even the function of rivets, tending instead to fall back on threaded fasteners which are more widely available.
The most recent development in Riveting is the self-piercing rivet, where you do not need a hole in order to rivet two materials together. This process is now commonplace in state-of-the-art automotive manufacturing plants. JLR being pre-eminent in this regard.
The process used to produce these fasteners has been developed in order to use the same manufacturing technique, Cold Forging, but to enable finished components to be forged outright, with the same benefits, no waste and a very strong structural integrity.
We are happy to help customers or prospective customers with any queries that may have regarding riveting or cold forging. We have recently helped a number of companies by producing and riveting prototype designs for them.
We have been in this business since 1939, over that time we have provided innovative, low cost solutions to many fastening and cost reduction requirements, thrown at us by our customers.