Fasteners image courtesy of Elgin Fastener Group.
I had a middle-school science teacher who slipped on some black ice while driving home from a thanksgiving dinner. At the legal but fast 65 miles per hour, the car spun out of control, ran off the road and crashed into an unforgiving cement side-barrier. His wife, who was buckled in the passenger seat beside him, died instantly. My teacher survived but was severely injured, breaking several bones in his body. His left leg was particularly damaged, its bones shattered— initially believed to the point beyond repair. It was assumed he would never walk again and for a man who loved being active, the weight of this prospect crushed his already grieving heart.
As you are probably hoping, this sad story does not end there; the doctors ended up deciding to give the leg a chance and go through the long, arduous and tedious process of putting his leg back together, replacing the irreparable femur with a metal rod. As you can imagine, this operation demanded fasteners in which to hold it all together. This is just one example of why fasteners are so important: from reconstructing a house to reconstructing a human body, there’s got to be a way to put it all together securely— and there’s nothing better than a nut, bolt and screw to do it.
From plastic to metal, threaded to un-threaded, metric to un-metric, fasteners are used in all sorts of contexts: in addition to the medical industry, construction, furniture, electronic, commercial, automotive, industrial and commercial industries depend on fasteners for a plethora of things and applications. Stainless steel fasteners are probably the most common, though plastic fasteners are also used, typically for light-weight duty on small appliances and décor. The sizes, shapes and abilities of fasteners are diverse and deciding which kind to use can be difficult if you don’t understand the whys and whats of their varying characteristics.
Stainless steel fasteners, if I’m remembering correctly, were used in my teacher’s leg and continue to support him today as he healthily and happily teaches science on his own, albeit partially metallic, two legs.
