Monday, November 18, 2013

How To Use Self Tapping Screws

By Bonnie Contreras


Self tapping screws are also called self drilling screws. They get their name because they drill a hole in the metal as you are driving it to hold two or more pieces of metal together without jiggling them around to make sure the holes line up. This is particularly desirable if you are mounting, say, a television screen on a metal frame, or placing a sheet of corrugated metal on the back side of a set of shelving.

They are brilliant gadgets and well loved by those who use them. They save marriages, spare injuries and involve a lot less hair-pulling and swearing. That almost takes the fun out of it. They are also used to mount surveillance cameras on a metal frame and in dentistry. Tooth implants are considered to be self tapping screws.

The heads of these remarkably useful devices are in the Phillips or crosshead configuration. This gives the drill bit a little more leverage when drilling it through two or three layers of metal. Plain ones are also available. It just goes to show how important it is to have the right tool for the job and how a subtle change to form can make a huge difference in function.

Most conventional screws are right-handed and need to be tightened in the clockwise direction. To loosen, turn the screwdriver counterclockwise. A convenient mneumonic is, "lefty-loosey, righty-tighty." The same principle applies to adjusting a radiator or opening or closing a jar of jam or pickles.

There are numerous other kinds of screw. There are differences in the pitch (the distance between threads), and they differ in composition (steel, zinc, copper, nickel, brass or chromium). They can have different heads, flat or round; plain or Phillips head (cross head).

The design for the Phillips head screwdriver was purchased from its inventor, John Thompson, from a man from Portland Oregon named Henry Phillips. Phillips made a few tweaks and then had the final design patented. Among its early users was the firm that manufactured the Cadillac, General Motors. Phillips eventually sold the patent to the Ford Motor Company for a grand total of $5 million, an enormous sum now and even more enormous in 1945.

A left-hand screw is used for something that is going to encounter severe counterclockwise forces, such as the left pedal of a bicycle. In this case, ordinary screws would come undone. Any linear actuator with helically arranged threads may legitimately be termed a screw. Archimedes' screw water pump and ship's propellers are examples.

Self tapping screws are brilliant devices that save time and hassle when fastening pieces of metal to one another without the need to drill separate holes which you then have to fiddle around and line up. Sometimes, less is more when it comes to design. Screws have a lot of different varieties. They are made from a number of different metallic materials, such as copper, chromium, steel, zinc or nickel.




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