The Latest At Valley Forge

The spring ASTM Committee F16 on Fasteners meeting was held this past week and was attended by several Valley Forge members.

The purpose of the F16 Committee, which is broken into subgroups, is to maintain, update and improve existing standards.

The various subcommittees conducted their usual business and F16 main wrapped up on Tuesday afternoon.

This report is intended to high lite some of the major issues and topics from the meetings.

 

ASTM F2482 Load-Indicating Externally Threaded Fasteners

 

During the F16-02 meeting a representative of Industrial Indicators (formally Stress Indicators) requested that a task group be formed to include their product, Smart Bolt & the “Chroma Series”, into the F2482 specification.  Several years ago, F16 made a determination to reduce the number of fastener standards by grouping like product standards.  Although the F2482 standard is not up for renewal until 2020, it was agreed that a task group be formed.  Valley Forge was initially a principal in the introduction and the writing of this standard.  It is expected that the rewrite of the standard will be divided into two (2) distinct categories.  They will be the original “Measuring Type” and a “Go/No Go” type.  Valley Forge will participate in the work group to insure the integrity of the standard and the clear distinction of the two (2) types.

 

F16.96 Subcommittee on Bolting Technology 

The interesting aspect of this committee are the Technical Presentations delivered by various companies.  The representative of Industrial Indicators (formally Stress Indicators) introduced their new “Chroma Series” tension indicating fastener.  Unlike their Smart Bolt it requires a chromatic displacement transducer to determine if the predetermined tension has been reached.  It was presented as an upgrade of the Smart Bolt with an expected accuracy of +/- 5%.  To date the development is being completed, and a protoype unit was on display for inspection.

 

F16.97 Coordination with North American TAGs to ISO TC 2 on Fasteners

ISO TC2 on Fasteners worldwide representatives will be meeting in Montreal Oct. 15 – Oct. 19.

In the last meeting the Chinese Delegation presented an interesting item.  They had wished to include in ISO 898, a product in class 8.8 & 9.8, using non-heat-treated material.  They have been using this material throughout China for several years. Their attempts at 10.9 have not been successful.  This concept was totally rejected by the committee.  The question is “will this product find its way into North America”?

After several years of discussion, testing and review of results, ISO 4042 has been voted on and accepted.  This is an electroplating specification that somewhat follows ASTM F1941 removing baking for items 360 HV and below.  They however, put in a grey area between HV 360 – 390 that cautions the specification user that they may wish to consider baking.  We will understand this new specification better once we obtain a printed version.

 

B08 Metallic and Organic Coatings

B08-06 Soft Metals

As most of you are aware there are two (2) standards within ASTM, both pertaining to electro deposited zinc.  They are F1941 & B633 and they disagree at what hardness is baking to be performed.  In 2007, B633 was change to make baking mandatory at RC31, grade 5 or higher.  The B08-06 committee has claimed that there was work performed to support this change.  They however; have not presented the supporting documents. ASTM has stated that they will not become involved to resolve the discrepancy.  It must be resolved by the individual committees. The specification has now been basically rewritten and submitted for comments.

Of course, many negatives were received and an all-day work session was held on Wednesday to resolve the negatives.  Basically, many of the areas of the document were rewritten and restructured to resolve the negatives.  At the end of the day there still remained negatives. It was decided to once more send out the rewritten specification for a vote.  The negative comments will be dealt with at the next meeting or by special action by the voting members.  It is believed that the majority of the voting members will accept the rewritten standard and find the negatives “non-persuasive”.  The rewriting of this standard and the removal of the requirement for baking beginning at RC31 is very important.  Valley Forge has a voting member serving on this committee.