What is this type of bolt called?

I've pulled my hair out trying every variation of 'square head bolt' I can think of on Google. Can anyone tell me what this type of bolt is called and where I may be able to find it as I need to buy 50-100 of them. Just to help figure out the size the thread is an M4 so we are dealing with a pretty small fastener. Thanks for your help and I'll post when I found some.
Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

A bolt like that is sometimes called a "T-bolt" or a "T bolt stud" or "T-slot bolt" (i.e., the head is intended to slide in a "T" groove) -- but that's a very small one with a rather thin head (and metric ) -- is it off a piece of furniture?

http://www.mcmaster.com/#tooling-component-t-slot-bolts/=ngqhql

 

The bolt is from a very obscure vintage Ferrari part that I am having reproduced. The square head fits into a groove that is part of a molded plastic assembly. I'm having the plastic re-made but would prefer not to have to make bolts.

 

Well, for that application (clamping a plastic structure), it makes perfect sense (just like on wood furniture) -- i.e., it's not clamping a huge load, so the head doesn't need to be super robust, and it needs to be large to spread the load over a big area. Good luck with the search, but, my guess, is that it may not be an easy one (unless you buy 10,000 ) -- but you might really try searching specialty furniture fastener sites, too.

 

Have you tried carriage bolts?

 

Who was it...... Fastenal, who was invented in the late 60's by a guy that wanted to stock EVERY type of nut and bolt in existence?
Most large cities have a couple of places that specialize in nothing but nuts, bolts and screws.

http://www.fastenal.com/web/products/fasteners/_/Navigation?r=~|categoryl1:"600000%20Fasteners"|~%20~|categoryl2:"600001%20Bolts"|~

Call people, you may not see it on a website but they can probably find it if it is made.

 

So far I have tried a number of fastener specialists including Fastenal. I am certain that this type of bolt is used commonly in an industry that I am not familiar with and as soon as I search under the correct name or am led in the right direction that the world will be my oyster.

 

For your application, consider something like this:

MSM1B1515M412 - Veck bonding fasteners

 

your difficulty in obtaining it-slooted blind bolts-is that the methodology is largely obsolete, and no longer used due to cost of manufacturee, thus, availability is near impossible.
No application, no market, none made....thus supplies exhaust,
...and specialized short run machine cnc shop runs are the only solution.

Cars are not made this way anymore, its all bayonet plastic insterts made for, initial install, and perhaps, and I stress: perhaps, once reused.... before platics break.
its ugly out there...

We had to buy and learn to use an Okuma CNC lathe and a Fadal cnc mill to deal with the ever dwindling availability of 50+ year old fasteners, etc!
good luck

 

Here you go.....


http://www.mcmaster.com/#t-slot-bolts/=ngru4l

 

Guys thanks for the help but so far no luck. I have tried the usual sources but the real problem comes in finding a bolt that is as small as M5. Large square head bolts are easy to come by at places like McMaster Carr. The bolt I need is not to be encased in plastic but rather slides into a pre-molded groove. The technology may be old but I still see it from time to time in electronics so I'm looking in that world for a little guidance. Again feel free to shoot off any leads and I'll post when I find something.

 

Pity MC only goes to 6 mm. Maybe rethread the M6 to an M4 as a rework?

Bill

 

I need about 50 pcs so re-machining is out. Also the head needs to be very close to original size as the tolerances that it fits into are pretty tight.

 

Probably have to CNC some bar stock.

Last year I had 10-sniffer manifold tube nuts made from SS. About $250 IIRC and I have extra material and a program. Once set up, it's really just material costs.

Maybe add some value by specifying a superior material or sliding surface finish.

I assume you checked all the usual suspects for used examples?

 

Unless I can find something soon I will look to some offshore sources that list these as off the shelf parts. I just really want to avoid that if I can. As for the usual sources I can say that getting the sample part to tool off of took almost 2 years to find looking all over the world (it is that obscure). The bolt is not a removable part from the assembly. I was so frustrated trying to find one that I vowed to make them and take the part off the endangered species list.

 

Contact these guys.

Metric Multistandard Components Corp.

They promise that they can find anything in nuts and bolts.

I have used them a couple times, found them to be quite friendly and helpful.

D

 

here's a shot
T-Nuts, T-Bolts, T-Blocks - T-Nuts, T-Bolts, T-Blocks

may not be a square head but they do have the M4 size.

 

I think if I were going to have some made, I would start with a standard hex-head cap screw for the stock piece, of the correct thread size / pitch and length of course, and mill the head down (assuming that there is enough material available) to match the desired shape ---- I think that would be the cheapest way to make exactly what you need (assuming you can't find any off the shelf).

Even for a quantity of (50), a low-end machine shop should be able to do this for maybe $75, or so.

 

I'll share what my machine shops say about machining on fasteners, PITA! I needed some needle valves made and figured it may be easier to start with brass machine screws and turn them down, nope was told it was faster and easier just to single point the thread and point. the heads on bolts are forged so they don't exactly have a uniform shape and size.

given that it'd probably be easier to have them machined from square stock.

 

Don't spend any money yet.. I need the dimentions of the square part and you said 4MM? I have a easy and fast solution. It is 12 AM so I will do it in the morning.

 

According to my calipers the dimensions are as follows"

Head width: 8mm x 8mm
Head thickness: 1.8-2mm
Thread length: 12mm
Thread OD: 4.9mm Which = M5 (I got my original post wrong and could not correct it)

I'm really interested to see what you come up with.

 

The alarm siren in my 360 is held in place by bolts exactly like this. True it's not a new car, but it isn't all that old.

Unfortunately I don't remember the size, but I'm pretty sure they're significantly larger than what the OP is looking for.

 

Last resort might be a square nut and a short stud with loctite or spot welded.

5 mm x 8 Vintage Reproduction Stainless Square Nut | eBay

I did find a source on the internet from china, but the minimum order is 10k pieces.

Flat Head Stainless Steel 5mm Bolt - Buy 5mm Bolt,Bolt,Bolt Nut Product on Alibaba.com

Good luck,

Jerry
DRG

 

Rob, what is your target acquisition cost for this fastener? It is fairly simple to machine, but much more expensive than finding a supplier who already carries it.

Our company doesn't do outside job shop work, but we have all the CNC machines that could make these types of fasteners. If you decide to go the route of making a small batch run, here's what you are looking for when you interview machine shops:

1) The ideal shop to make this part has a CNC Swiss lathe with live tooling. A swiss style lathe is a twin-spindle lathe that automatically feeds ROUND (not square) bar stock to the primary spindle to machine the first half of the part, then cuts it off and hands it to the second spindle to machine the back half of the part. The benefit to using a swiss machine is that the work is all done in 1 setup. If we were going to make this part, we would run the job on one of our CNC swiss lathes. OP1 would either single point machine or whirl the threads, leaving an oversized round head to be milled into the square shape on OP2.

Rough guess - using a swiss lathe it would take 1.5-2.0 minutes per part to machine it and the manufacturing cost would be somewhere around $1.50 each with Zinc plating. However, the real killer is writing the CNC program. It's a couple of hours of programming and unfortunately that cost gets amortized over your very small lot size.

2) Alternately the part can be made like SMG2 described, albeit with round stock on 2 separate machines. OP1 would start with round stock loaded into a lathe to cut the threads and then cut off the part. OP2 would be cutting the square head on a vertical mill.

Good luck with the project! I deal with these kinds of headaches every day as we attempt to reverse engineer various specialized OEM components.

 

You may want to look at body moulding clips and steal the bolt out of them. Some are quite cheap and probably have the bolt you are looking for. I have attached a pic of one that has everything dimension wise, but full threads and the correct thread pitch. This one is made for a self thread cutting nyloc nut. This came out of a clip that is off a Porsche 964 lower rocker panel. I also remember the rolls royce of the 50's era using this on the trim. The thread is more than likely British standard and more expensive. I forget the name of the company as it has been so many years since I worked in the auto trades, but there is a company who makes and has a large cataloge of aftermarket body panel clips. They used to have pictures and descriptions. Perhaps you could hang out at a local body shop-probably import since it is metric you are looking for and go thru their bucket of extra bolts and find what you are looking for. I am sure the guy working there would be able to tell you what they are used on and where you could order more.
Image Unavailable, Please Login