I came across some interesting self locking screws, the Taptite Powerlok fasteners. Designed for use in tapped holes, they use a trilobular profile and a special thread profile. Check it out here. If anyone has experience using these, I’d appreciate it if you could post a comment with your thoughts!

PEM has a new product out, their ‘SpotFast’ fasteners. It’s a double-flush rivet, but is press fit like almost everything else they make. They have the additional ability to be used as captive pivots! Interesting; I’ve used custom countersunk semi-tubular rivets for a double flush pivot in the past, and obviously this lower cost solution would be attractive. I recently finished a chassis design that used these; I needed a double flush solution for joining two walls together; I ruled out swaging (almost chose that, but thought it’d be better to reduce the number of second op stations needed), spot welding (chassis is zinc pre-plate), and even the double flush pop rivets (MOQ problems) before settling on these. The chassis already has a lot of other press fit hardware, so this is just one more part to install (3X). Read more over at PEM’s website.

I’ve always loved Legos, they’re a great toy for stimulating the creativity in young (and old!) minds. Business Week has a neat article talking about the history of these building blocks; you can read it here.