Battery Powered Rivet Nut Gun in Agriculture Equipment Assembly

In high volume production facilities, safety practices are a top priority for company management. Establishing safety practices is imperative in order to protect the health of its workforce while managing the costly financial implications of a worker’s compensation claim due to a workplace injury. Safety in the workplace helps build employee trust, promotes high levels of productivity, allows management to focus their energy toward revenue generating activities and creates a solid business reputation in the marketplace. The bottom-line? Safety creates happy and healthy results for all stakeholders in a business.

Battery Powered Rivet Nut Guns help facilitate a safer work environment.  many tools have been designed with safety and ergonomics in mind.

High Volume Rivet Nut Install Tools

Up until recently, high volume rivet nut install tools were only powered by long pneumatic air lines that forced compressed air through the tool to actuate and install the fastener. While air lines are a familiar sight in a factory setting, in certain mobile settings or moving assembly lines (see below case study), air lines could become a productivity drain or a safety hazard.

Cordless battery rivet nut tools first became available in 2010, but there was limited availability, and the first generation of tools were meant for light duty personal projects. These tools did not meet the needs of the top Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) in the USA. Over the years, new generations of cordless battery install tools were manufactured.

Starting in about 2017, several cordless tool options have become reliable workhouses in heavy duty, ongoing production environments. Rivet Nut USA™ (a division of Cardinal Components), is proud to offer several battle-tested cordless battery install tools that covers your specialty fastener needs, especially for rivets and rivet nuts.

A Case Study – “Cutting the Cord” at an Agricultural Tractor Production Facility

Tractor assembly typically occurs on a constantly moving production line (see photo above) and requires employees to climb up into and back down the tractor cab throughout the production process. To install a fastener in this environment, an assembler, with fasteners and rivet nut installation tool in hand, must climb up stairs of a partially assembled tractor cab while on a moving production line. One might conclude that it’d be nice if a worker could use a cordless tool. It’s easy to see why safety committees typically favor a cordless, battery powered hardware installation tool to reduce the chance of a trip-and-fall incidents.

Agricultural Equipment Manufacturer Safety Audit

Several years ago, a large United States based agricultural tractor OEM underwent a safety audit and found production line employees utilizing rivet nut (RIVNUT®) installation tools hooked up to an air compressor by way of pneumatic air lines. These air lines created slip, trip, and fall hazards, and could cause injury within workstations all the way down their MOVING production line. An injury increases worker’s compensation claims for the company and creates unnecessary downtime in production. The safety committee deemed it necessary to create a safer, more efficient assembly environment by eliminating as many “cords” as possible – power cords, data lines and air lines were to be minimized or eliminated.

This tractor OEM contacted Rivet Nut USA to source a “cordless” installation tool solution for their fastener installs. This Tractor OEM was in good hands when they partnered with Rivet Nut USA, as Rivet Nut USA has been creating fastener tooling solutions for OEMs since 1983.

Rivet Nut USA’s Solution

For this tractor OEM, Rivet Nut USA offered the perfect solution to replace the pneumatic air lines running the rivet nut tools. Rivet Nut USA was proud to provide the industry leading cordless battery solution, the Bollhoff B2007 install tool. The Bollhoff B2007 has internal quality control sensors and is considered a preferred rivet nut installation tool for high-volume environments while being ergonomically friendly and offering a long lifespan.

The Bollhoff B2007 RIVNUT® cordless battery tool has been extensively tested to operate like the pneumatic versions, but without the air line!

The Bollhoff B2007 Features:

• a rechargeable battery, typically doing several hundred installs per charge cycle, depending on the rivet nut size (M3 is smaller, so a battery could do more installs than say, a M12 thread) and material type (aluminum is softer and allows for more installs per charge than say, stainless steel).
• internal quality sensors, such as a pressure loadcell display that confirms the install load is consistent and appropriate. Other sensors include a countdown to next maintenance cycle and a counter that tracks the number of installs being completed.
• the ability to be serviced, which is a great feature considering many other tools are not supported by a tool lab and usually end up in the scrap bin when they become inoperable. However, the B2007 (and any pneumatic or battery tool that Rivet Nut USA sells) can be repaired by qualified technicians (please do not attempt repairs, ship the tool to Rivet Nut USA for repair).

Cordless Rivet Nut Tools for High Volume Production

By switching over to cordless rivet nut tools, this agricultural tractor manufacturer immediately reduced tripping hazards for their employees, reduced worker’s compensation claims, and decreased workplace injuries. Their employees are now happier and healthier! Plus, the company’s production downtime was reduced.

This manufacturer found that the benefits of switching to cordless install tools to be so beneficial that they designed new applications to further increase their production usage of rivets and rivet nuts! Battery operated/cordless tool installation saved this agricultural business time, money, and worker injury and can do the same, in such industries as aerospace, appliance, construction, marine, military, transportation, and MORE!

For 40+ years, Rivet Nut USA has been a comprehensive resource that provides high quality components and installation tooling, which improves the quality of your product, extends the life of your application and are competitively priced.

Rivet Nut USA is Your One-Stop-Shop for Fastening Needs

No matter what you’re looking for, Rivet Nut USA is your one-stop-shop for all your fastener and installation tool needs. We are the preferred distributor of Bollhoff fasteners and installation tools. Rivet Nut USA, stocks them for just-in-time delivery into a customer’s production line. For an audit of your high rate production Battery Powered Rivet Nut Gun applications, contact Rivet Nut USA’s experienced team for further information at 800.236.3200 or contact us to Request a FREE Quote!