Category Archive: Fastener Tidbits
Sherex is excited to announce that Spaenaur will be stocking our TEC Series® line of wedge locking washers for fast delivery throughout Canada. Spaenaur has distributed Disc-Lock® products throughout Canada for many years. That alliance has now grown to include in-house stocking of Sherex’s newest wedge locking washer line available for immediate distribution.
“Spaenaur has been a great distributor for us throughout Canada and to see this relationship grow is exciting,” said Adam Pratt, president, Sherex Fastening Solutions.
The addition of TEC Series completes the portfolio of wedge locking washers that eliminate vibrational loosening. TEC Series are designed for applications requiring future application disassembly, while Disc-Lock washers are preferred for fastened joints that do not require future disassembly.
“We are delighted to now represent TEC Series in Canada,” says Product Management Director John Sweeny. “Our customers expect ‘fasteners right now.’ That we can now meet our customers’ urgent needs with a high-quality product at a more attractive price point is the icing on the cake. TEC Series wedge locking washers do that for us. Our partnership with Sherex not only expands our product portfolio, but also adds to the decades of success Spaenaur has already experienced with Disc-Lock.”
Wedge locking washers are used by a variety of different industries and manufacturers, but are also becoming more common around the house for general repair. With TEC Series and Disc-Lock wedge locking washers, you can tighten it, and forget it.
About Spaenaur
Spaenaur is recognized as a leading Canadian distributor for industrial fasteners, hardware components and tools serving Distribution, MRO and Production markets. Started in 1936, we are a third generation family-owned company operating out of Kitchener, Ontario. Our 1700-page catalog of standard and hard-to-find parts is regarded as one of the best fastener resource guides in the industry. For more information about Spaenaur’s products and services, visit us online at spaenaur.com or contact customer service at 1-800-265-8772.
About Sherex Fastening Solutions:
Sherex Fastening Solutions is a leading manufacturer of fasteners for thin sheet material applications in steel, aluminum, and composite materials. Sherex manufactures rivet nuts, clinch nuts, inserts for composite, stud and nut plates, and through the acquisition of Disc-Lock®, wedge-locking washers and nuts. Sherex has two strategic production facilities: Sherex Taiwan, located in Chungli, Taiwan, is certified to IATF 16949:2016, ISO 14001 and has an ISO 17025 accredited lab, and Sherex Akron, located in Akron, Ohio, is certified to ISO 9001:2015 and AS 9100. Sherex has grown to 200 employees and services a wide-range of industries, including automotive, general manufacturing, energy, agricultural, and aerospace.
By Frank Genovese, Applications Engineer, Sherex
There’s always peace of mind knowing that a correctly installed rivet nut is the end of your concerns.
However, there is more to a properly installed rivet nut to ensure its success.
Your rivet nut will be exposed to the outside world of air and moisture, or it may reside in an environment where the piece will be subject to many bumps and scratches throughout its lifetime. While correctly installing the rivet nut is vitally important to its success as a fastener, there’s one more consideration you have to combat when it comes to rivet nut installation — corrosion.
Corrosion protection for rivet nuts is vitally important when it comes to ensuring the rivet nut will be successful, and there are many ways to combat corrosion.
First, what is corrosion? Corrosion is a surface oxidation process that appears, mainly, in two forms: white rust and red rust.
White Rust a white powder composed of zinc oxide, which eventually coats portions of a surface containing zinc such as the protective layer of zinc-based plating that coats many rivet nuts.
This corrosion does not directly harm the structural integrity of a piece, but makes the piece more vulnerable to a more compromising form of corrosion — red rust, referred to by many as simply “rust.”
Red rust is an iron oxide that physically eats away at the base iron that composes your piece.
So how do you ensure optimal corrosion protection?
Look for rivet nut offerings that are stress-tested with a “salt-spray” test, which subjects rivet nuts to heavy abrasion until rust appears. Rivet nuts coated in a zinc plate with trivalent chromate, which must, at minimum, withstand 96 hours in a salt-spray test before white rust appears with red rust not appearing for another 240 hours. Zinc plate with trivalent chromate comes in clear, yellow, or black options.
For higher corrosion protection, zinc-nickel platings can achieve white-rust times of up to 144 hours minimum, as well as red-rust times of up to 1,200 hours.
If you have rivet nuts that only come in a trivalent plating, a strip and re-plate operation is possible to obtain the plating that best suits you.
The very best option when it comes to corrosion resistance is stainless steel. Stainless steel, though, can be difficult to install so make sure you have the proper tooling to ensure your stainless steel rivet nuts can be installed properly.
If you have any questions regarding which plating or material solution fits your application best please contact us! We are more than happy to give you the information necessary to make an informed decision.
Welcome to The Fastener Fix!
The purpose of this blog is to be a source of information and idea gathering for fastener solutions, to keep you up-to-speed with different fastener offerings from Sherex, and relay other musings from the fastener world. Some posts might be long form, explaining the science behind a specific fastener or solutions, others might be little tidbits of information or announcements.
Either way, we hope to keep you informed, entertained, and up-to-date on all things fasteners and Sherex!
Cheers!
