Adhesives Gaining Ground On Mechanical Fasteners?
FEATURE
PEM VariMount Fastening System
MEDIA SPOTLIGHT: “Multiple materials are now common in aerospace and automotive assemblies, and they’re showing up in consumer electronics and medical devices,” writes Ann R. Thryft, senior technical editor for materials and assembly at Design News.
“Fastening them together has been a major dilemma. Outside of specialized aerospace and automotive designs, very few fasteners can do the job reliably.”
But adhesive makers are responding with new products for automotive and aerospace applications, according to Design News.
“Although the growth of multimaterial designs began in response to automotive lightweighting, continued demand for smaller, lighter systems in consumer electronics and medical devices has accelerated the trend.”
Assemblies with “multimaterial joining challenges” tend to be located in the big parts of vehicles, such as doors and tailgates, “where there’s the largest opportunity to take weight out,” Design News reports.
The latest area of growth for multimaterial adhesives is in personal electronics, such as mobile devices, wearables, and medical devices, in which many of the subcomponents (cameras, flashlights, speakers, etc.) require different materials, Design News reports.
“As these components get tinier, it’s become very difficult to use common assembly technologies like welding, screwing, or riveting.”
While many fasteners are incompatible with plastics, PennEngineering has developed a fastener that seems to be bucking that trend.
The PEM VariMount Fastening System is for those who need to put fasteners on panels of composites or other rigid materials like plastics or metals, PennEngineering global marketing director Leon Attarian told Design News.
“Our original mission was to develop a fastener for composites, and this one did that,” Attarian said. “Then, during development we realized that with a few modifications the product could also be used to mount things to other types of rigid panel materials. As the name indicates, it can be mounted to a variety of materials using a variety of mounting methods.”
The VariMount assembly combines self-clinching technology “permanently mounted on a round steel or stainless steel baseplate,” Thryft writes.
“The assembly can then be mounted on a composite panel combined with adhesive, or laminated directly into the composite in between sheets of material so it becomes more integrated in the piece. Radial holes in the baseplate for mounting the assembly accept rivets and self-clinching fasteners in standard diameters, as well as nuts, bolts, and screws.”
Click here to read the complete Design News article.
Editor’s Note: Articles in MEDIA SPOTLIGHT are excerpts from publications or broadcasts which show the industry what the public is reading or hearing about fasteners and fastener companies.
Related Stories:
There are no comments at the moment, do you want to add one?
Write a comment