What are fastening pins?
Optimising the manufacturing process involves specialty fasteners to keep industrial machinery in alignment or held tightly together.
These specialty fasteners, called machine pin fasteners, are available in two general categories: semi-permanent and quick release.
As you’d expect, semi-permanent pins need extra pressure or a tool to install and remove. Quick-release pins are entirely self-contained and usually used in machines involved in rapid manufacturing. A special spring-loaded mechanism locks these pins into place, and they can easily be installed and removed quickly.
There are four types of machine pin fasteners:
Ground Dowel Pins
Small and straight, these are rather basic in design and used to help align components before they’re bound together with screws or other fasteners. The components are aligned and clamped together before holes are drilled. The drill pins are then inserted to keep the pieces together while the screw holes are drilled.
These are fasteners used to help hold other fasteners’ nuts in place. A threaded fastener’s nut can loosen over time due to some fasteners being subjected to quite a lot of stress. To prevent this from happening, a cotter pin slides into place. You can get them in various sizes. Cotter pins are often used with slotted nuts on bolts and screws. They’re also used to hold clevis pins in place, and help secure parts to shafts.
Taper Pins
Taper pins are most often used in mechanical engineering. They’re usually small steel pins with a larger diameter on one end than the other. Some types of taper pins feature a male screw thread on the smaller end. This helps hold the pin in place. Other taper pins feature two threaded ends and are usually used to affix wheels and levers to shafts.
Clevis Pins
A clevis pin acts as a kind of hinge. A movable connection is created between mated components, held in place by cotter pins. Essentially, clevis pins allow rotation around the pin shank, and are often used with a shackle to allow the pin to be hitched to another device. It’s this construction that makes them easy to remove or adjust quickly. The most common applications for clevis pins are used in sailing, such as fastening turnbuckles, and in construction.
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