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Rivetting


andypugh

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Faced with a lot of 3/16" steel rivets to install in a small chassis (non-miltary, a Ner-a-Car) I decided to make a rivet squeezer. The same approach could probably be applied on a bigger scale for chassis rivets (and, in fact, this device could almost certainly handle hot-rivetting on 1/2" rivets.)

 

http://bodgesoc.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/hydraulicrivetsqueezer.html

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Neat bit of kit, nicely done!

Brings back memories of working in the local wheelbarrow factory in the school holidays to earn a bit of pocket money. I was stationed at the end of the paint dip tank with a very similar hand held rivet setter, my job to rivet the supports for the barrow body above the wheel..... it was about an hour into my work, as the first of the newly painted barrow frames got to the assembly area, that it was noticed that I had been riveting them on back to front :red:.

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Andy,

 

What a neat solution to your problem.

 

You refer to your device being able to handle 1/2" rivets hot. I think you might struggle with this because although you would probably have the tonnage available I doubt that you could pump fast enough to get the head formed while the rivet is still red hot. The shank should still be red hot after the head is formed so that the contraction as it cools will pull the plates together. This is not an issue with 3/16" rivets in 1/8" sheet but is with thicker plates and bigger rivets. As a general rule you need twice the tonnage to do top class hot riveting (where you need the rivet shank to fully fill the hole, as with boiler work) than to just form a head, and about the same tonnage to cold rivet with half the diameter rivet of a hot rivet. You need enough tonnage in cold riveting to squish the finished diameter of the head, not just the original shank diameter. Obviously speed is not critical here but it very much is with hot riveting, as I said above it must be completed while the rivet is still hot.

 

I have an old textbook that gives the following pressures required for hot 1/2" rivets: 9 tons for girder work, 15 tons for (water) tank work, 20 tons for boiler work. It also points out that these are for situations where the plates add up to about the same thickness as the rivet diameter. If the plates add up to four times the rivet diameter, the above figures would be doubled !

 

David

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