Screw Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
This article refers to the threaded fastener. For other meanings, see Screw (disambiguation)
A screw is a shaft with a helical groove formed on its surface. Its main uses are as a threaded fastener used to hold objects together, and as a simple machine used to translate torque into linear force.
Threaded Fastener
A screw used as a threaded fastener consists of a shaft, which may be cylindrical or conical, and a head. The shaft has a helical ridge or thread formed on it. The thread mates with a complementary helix in the material.
The material may be manufactured with the mating helix, or the screw may create it when first driven in. The head is specially shaped to allow a screwdriver or wrench to grip the screw when driving it in. It also stops the screw from passing right through the material being fastened and provides compression.
Screws can normally be removed and re-inserted without reducing their effectiveness. They have greater holding power than nailss and permit disassembly and reuse.
A screw that is tightened by turning it clockwise is said to have a right-hand thread. Screws with left-hand threads are used in exceptional cases, when the screw is subject to anticlockwise forces that might undo a right-hand thread.
A small diameter bolt is commonly called a machine screw.
The thread on a bolt often occupies only part of the shaft, the remainder of the shaft being clear.
A bolt whose shaft is threaded along its whole length is sometimes called a set screw.
A stud is similar to a bolt but without the head. Studs are threaded on both ends. In some cases the entire length of the stud is threaded, while in other cases there will be an unthreaded section in the middle. It may be anchored in concrete, for example, with only the threads on one end exposed.
Critical applications of screws and bolts will specify a torque that must be applied when tightening. The main concept is to stretch the bolt, and compress the parts being held together, creating a spring like assembly. The stretch introduced to the bolt is called a pre-load. When external forces try to separate the parts, the bolt sees no strain unless the pre-load force is exceeded (this takes some effort to imagine).
As long as the pre-load is never exceeded, the bolt or nut will never come loose (assuming the full strength of the bolt is used). If the full strength of the bolt is not used (eg. a steel bolt into aluminum threads) then a thread locking adhesive may be used.
If the pre-load is exceeded during normal use the joint will eventually fail. The pre-load is calculated as a percentage of the bolt's yield strength, or the strength of the threads it goes into, whichever is less.
High-tensile bolts are usually in the form of hexagonal cap screws with an ISO strength rating (called property class) stamped on the head. The strength ratings most often used are 8.8 and 12.9. The number before the point is the ultimate tensile strength in N/mm2 (or MPa) divided by 100.
This is the stress at which the bolt will fail, i.e. break in half.
The number after the point is the yield strength as a percentage of the ultimate tensile strength, divided by 10.
Yield strength is the stress at which the bolt will receive a permanent set (an elongation from which it will not recover when the force is removed) of 0.2%. When elongating a fastener prior to reaching the yield point, the fastener is said to be operating in the elastic region. Whereas elongation beyond the yield point is referred to as operating in the plastic region, since the fastener has suffered permanent plastic deformation.
Mild steel bolts have a 4.6 rating.
High-tensile bolts have an 8.8 rating or above.
"Metric" screw threads were once available in both coarse and fine versions in the past. The ISO adopted the coarse thread as its standard and designated it as the preferred thread series. The fine thread series is depricated and not reccommended for use in new designs. The fine metric threads were once found in equipment made in the Far East, but that has changed with the standardisation of the ISO preferred thread series.
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A later standard in the UK was the BA system, named after the British Association for Advancement of Science. Screws were described as "2BA", "4BA" etc., the odd numbers being rarely used. While not related to ISO metric screws, the sizes were actually defined in metric terms, a 0BA thread having a 1 mm pitch. These are still the most common threads in some niche applications. Certain types of fine machinery, such as moving-coil meters, tend to have BA threads wherever they are manufactured.
The USA has its own system, usually called the Unified Thread Standard. A version of this standard, called SAE for the Society of Automotive Engineers, found itself used in the American Automobile Industry. The SAE is still associated with inch based fasteners by the public even though the US auto industry (and other heavy industries relying on SAE) switched to ISO preferred series fasteners back in the 1970s and afterwards.
Screws are described as 4-40, 6-32, 8-32, 10-32, 10-24, etc. (for numeric sizes, odd numbers are rare), or 1/4"-20, 1/4"-28, etc. (for inch unit sizes), with the first number giving shaft diameter (numeric or inches) and the second number being threads per inch.
This is an Article on Screw. Page Contains Information, Facts Details or Explanation Guide About Screw Bolt
A bolt is a threaded fastener that passes through the workpiece and is held in place by a nut or a threaded hole on the other side. This is a very common way of holding together temporary and permanent constructions. An unthreaded hole is known as a clear hole.Other Fastening Methods
When screws and bolts cannot be used, nailing, riveting, welding, soldering, brazing and gluing are all alternatives.Mechanical Analysis
A screw is a specialized application of the wedge or inclined plane. It contains a wedge, wound around an interior cylinder or shaft, that either fits into a corresponding plane in a nut, or forms a corresponding plane in the wood or metal as it is inserted. The technical analysis (see also statics, dynamics) to determine the pitch, thread shape or cross section, coefficient of friction (static and dynamic), and holding power of the screw is very similar to that performed to predict wedge behavior. Wedges are discussed in the article on simple machines.Tensile Strength
Screws and bolts are usually in tension when properly fitted. In most applications they are not designed to bear large shear forcess.
For example, when two overlapping metal bars joined by a bolt are likely to be pulled apart longitudinally, the bolt must be tight enough that the friction between the two bars can overcome the longitudinal force. If the bars slip then the bolt may be sheared in half, or friction between the bars (called fretting) may weaken them. For this type of application, high-tensile steel bolts are used and these should be tightened with a torque wrench. Types of Screws
Shapes of Screw Head
(a) Pan, (b) Button, (c) Round, (d) Truss, (e) Flat, (f) OvalTypes of Screw Drive
Modern screws employ a wide variety of drive designs, each requiring a different kind of tool to drive in or extract them.
The most common screw drives are the slotted and Phillips; hex, Robertson, and torx are also common in some applications.
More exotic screw drive types may be used in situations where tampering is undesirable, such as in electronic appliances that should not be serviced by the home repairperson.
(a) Slotted, (b) Phillips, (c) Pozidriv, (d) Torx, (e) Hex, (f) Robertson, (g) Tri-Wing, (h) Torq-Set, (i) Spanner
Many screw drives, including Phillips, Torx, and Hexagonal, are also manufactured in tamper-resistant form. These typically have a pin protruding in the center of the bit, necessitating a special tool for extraction.
The slotted screw drive also comes in a tamper-resistant one-way design with sloped edges; the screw can be driven in, but the bit slips out in the reverse direction.Tools Used
The hand tool used to drive in most screws is called a screwdriver.
A power tool that does the same job is a power screwdriver; power drills may also be used with screw-driving attachments.
The hand tool for driving cap screws and other types is called a spanner (UK usage) or wrench (US usage).Screw Measurements
There are many systems for specifying the dimensions of screws, but in much of the world the ISO preferred series metric has displaced the many older systems. See also: Unified Thread StandardMetric Screws
The diameter of a ISO preferred series screw is usually specified in millimetres (mm) prefixed by the capital letter M, as in "M5" for a 5 mm diameter screw.
The diameter of a screw is the outer diameter of the thread, which is approximately equal to the diameter of the shaft before a thread was cut in it.Non-metric Screws
Before the metric system was common, many engineering companies had their own standard screw sizes. The first person to create a standard (in about 1841) was the English engineer Sir Joseph Whitworth.
Whitworth screw sizes are still used, both for repairing old machinery and where a coarser thread than the metric fastener thread is required. This system had two thread sizes: coarse (BSW) and fine (BSF). The thread angle was 55°.
These screws are sometimes found outside the USA in older model personal computers based on the IBM PC specification. Since the computer industry is now based in Asia (mostly Taiwan), the industry now uses metric fasteners. As more and more products are made outside the US and then imported into the US, the use of inch based fasteners is declining, and it is only a matter of time before the inch fastener series is gone forever.External links