What Are Fastener Standards? A Guide to Standards in the Fastener Industry
As industrial engineering progressed throughout the 20th century, many advancements were halted due to factory accidents, mechanical failures, and persistent weaknesses in designs. Forward-thinking engineers began to see the need for standardization within their industries, including everything from safety requirements to material designations.
Enter the emergence of fastener standards. Since fasteners literally hold the industrial world together, it was imperative that engineers use the same language, requirements, and expectations to communicate their fastener needs. The resulting standards for fasteners sparked an ever-growing industry of standard setting, which can be complicated to understand.
So what exactly is a fastener standard, who sets them, and what do they mean?
What is a Fastener Standard?
A fastener standard is usually a document with an explanation of parameters and is a way to communicate the understood requirements or elements of a fastener. When a fastener meets a given standard, that means its characteristics are communicated in a consistent, recognizable fashion.
For example, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) produces standards for many different types of fasteners, including dowel pins. The ASME B18.8.2 standard outlines that unhardened ground or hardened ground machine/production pins must meet specific diameter and length tolerances, shapes, surface smoothness, and material, finishing, and treatment requirements. When a dowel pin meets the ASME B18.8.2 standard, all of those requirements are immediately communicated with an assurance of consistency and conformance.
Manufacturers voluntarily choose whether or not to make standard-compliant fasteners, and many fasteners on the market are not associated with standards. However, many OEM designs require fasteners that meet these standards. At times, they are even required by law – for example, all toys sold in the U.S. must meet the ASTM International’s (ASTM’s) F963 safety standard, as required by the Consumer Production Safety Improvement Act.
Failing to comply with some of these standards could cause critical malfunctions and – at times – break the law, which could result in safety violations, injuries, and legal ramifications. It is important to source fasteners from a distributor who offers a range of standard-compliant parts.
What Does a Fastener Standard Cover?
Fastener standards cover a variety of elements. Dimensions (there are often separate standards for inch fasteners and metric fasteners), mechanical properties, classifications, materials, and usage are all common characteristics. For example, ASTM breaks down their standards into six different categories, which are helpful in understanding the range of fastener characteristics that are often standardized across other organizations. They are:
Overall, fastener standards aim to create uniform quality by establishing understood baselines for fastener characteristics, manufacturing processes, terminology, and expectations.
How Standards Help Customers and Manufacturers
Standards help customers by raising the level of quality and expectations of performance, reliability, and ease of use. In manufacturing, standards establish a common set of requirements to ensure conformity of products across all vendors. This eliminates trade borders and creates uniformity in production. Standards can also increase operational efficiency due to a strong focus on process that contributes to a reduction in production costs, which often results in cost savings for the customer.
Who Sets Fastener Standards?
Fastener standards are mostly set forth by non-profit organizations that standardize products and services to set safety, uniformity, and quality expectations. Some seek to establish these expectations on an international or country-specific scale, while others set guidelines for use in industry-specific applications like automotive or military applications.
These organizations do not exclusively handle fasteners – they also deal with procedures, safety guidelines, service expectations, business management, and other topics within their focus. However, there are several that produce well-known fastener standards.
Some of the most common organizations that govern fastener standards are:
The U.S. Department of Defense also designates specific standards that fastener manufacturers must meet in order to do contract work for the military. This includes:
Mil spec standards are often met through another standard (like an ANSI or SAE standard), but at times they are unique to the military or even a specific military branch.
Let’s take a deeper look at the most common organizations that develop standards for fasteners.
ASME - American Society of Mechanical Engineers
ASME, founded in 1880, is well known for establishing boiler and pressure codes in the early 1900s as a response to critical safety issues. This influenced the safety-oriented nature of their future standards, which cover engineering industries and their equipment designs, construction governance, reporting standards, and more. The standards they set for fasteners range from terminology and definitions to specific clearance hole dimensions for metric threaded fasteners.
Most ASME fastener standards are categories under the B18 naming system. For example, the Glossary of Terms for Mechanical Fasteners standard is categorized as B18.12 , while the Fasteners for Use in Structural Applications standard is known as B18.2.6 . Other standards include but are not limited to as quoted from ASME’s Codes & Standards:
Huyett offers fasteners that comply with the following standards:
ANSI – American National Standards Institute
ANSI serves to coordinate the creation of standards for a wide variety of industries, from dental to sanitation to health. They don’t actually create the standards themselves – rather, they provide a neutral ground for accrediting other standards organizations like ASME, ASTM, ISO, SAE, and DIN.
Because of this, you will see many ANSI standards listed as a dual name – for example, ANSI accredits ASME’s B18.8.2 standard, so you may see it as ANSI/ASME B18.8.2 .
If a standard is ANSI accredited, it means that the standard meets the requirements for openness, balance, consensus , and due process and adheres to ANSI’s neutral oversight (according to ANSI’s Roles). It will be considered an American National Standard (ANS), and will be represented as such to the international community.
Huyett offers a selection of fasteners in compliance with ANSI-accredited ASME standards, including the following (as quoted from ASME’s Codes & Standards):
SAE – Society of Automotive Engineers
Beginning in the early 1900s as an effort to standardize the American automobile industry, SAE International is now a global organization that encompasses most any form of mobility, including aerospace, with affiliate organizations in India, Brazil, and China. Their standards cover components, systems, and practices within air and ground vehicle industries, along with medical, defense, and management industries.
To create standards, SAE forms committees of industry experts and follows an eight-step development process that takes the standard from ideation creation to application improvement. Accepted standards can be found on the SAE Standards page and will display with its given industry category and current or historical state of existence.
Huyett offers fasteners that meet the following SAE standards as quoted from the SAE Standards:
ASTM International – American Society for Testing and Materials
ASTM International started as an American effort to address railroad failures in the early 1900s, out of which came steel standards for rails. Over the century, it expanded to include a wide variety of industries and members from over 140 countries.
Like other organizations, ASTM standards include everything from reporting guidance, safety rules, and equipment maintenance to specific dimensions for specific parts. While ASTM does have fastener standards, Huyett complies with ASTM’s metal standards in the manufacturing of fasteners. These cover a variety of metals for different uses, shapes, properties, chemical composition, and more.
Huyett offers fasteners that comply with ASTM standards regarding the material they are made from. They include (as quoted from the ASTM Standards Products page):
DIN – Deutsches Institute for Normung (German National Standards Institute)
DIN regulates German standards for a variety of parts and industries, but its first standard – published in 1918, according to the DIN Timeline – regulated the manufacturing of taper pins. As the organization grew, it encompassed a wider range of standards with a focus on quality assurance. It joined ISO in 1961 after establishing itself as a leading voice in European standards.
Eventually, ISO slowly took over the European role as the international standards representative. Today, DIN standards are usually covered under the ISO, unless an ISO standard does not exist for that given product or service. In that case, it is exclusively a DIN standard. DIN is still widely recognized and used in the international fastener industry because it represented metric standards before the ISO came into being.
Huyett offers fasteners that comply with around 40 DIN standards, which goes beyond the scope of this article to cover completely. However, here are a few common DIN standards Huyett offers (as quoted from the DIN Standards):
We also offer the following fasteners with DIN standard options: washers, clevis pins, grooved pins, taper pins, spring pins, flat bar stock, machine keys, square bar, grease fittings, eye bolts, dowel pins, retaining rings, woodruff keys, hex keys, hex head bolts, cotter pins, threaded rod, and precision balls.
ISO – International Organization for Standardization
The ISO is perhaps the most well-known standard organization in existence, as it owns almost 25,000 standards in industries ranging from camera film speed to currency codes to social responsibility. It began regulating fasteners about 50 years ago and eventually usurped DIN’s role as Europe’s main standard setter in the industry.
In the fastener realm, many ISO standards originated as DIN standards; such standards may now have different names, but they are essentially the same thing (some slight variations exist). For example, ISO 133337 used to be known as DIN 7346 . The two names represent the same standard, which regulates the dimensions of metric light-duty roll pins.
Huyett offers fasteners that comply with the following ISO (and applicable former DIN) standards as directly from the ISO:
ISO 9001:2015
One of the most important ISO standards that many fastener distributors and manufacturers (including Huyett) adhere to has nothing to do with fasteners; ISO 9001:2015 outlines quality management system guidelines that help companies develop consistent and data-based boundaries for benchmarks, processes, action plans, and improvement mechanisms.
Ultimately, when a company is ISO 9001:2015 certified, they communicate a commitment to predictable, high-quality production and service delivery to their customers. They also demonstrate a willingness to collect and respond to constructive feedback from both internal and external stakeholders. The ISO standard helps the company define a repeatable framework for continuous improvement.
MS – Military Specification
Military specification – or Mil Spec, mil specs, or MIL-STD – denotes a standard set by the U.S. Department of Defense for military or defense equipment. In many cases, MS uses other standards to define their own. For example, an MS fastener may use an ASTM standard to regulate testing methods, and/or may use an SAE standard to establish material requirements.
In many cases, these fasteners look and behave like their non-MS counterparts. The key differences are the exacting measurements and tolerance required for military use. However, sometimes there is no difference between an MS and non-MS fastener; in these cases, the difference is only whether the manufacturer has certified the fastener’s MS nature or not.
Huyett offers standard dowel pins, flat washers, woodruff keys, slotted spring pins, coiled spring pins, and standard cotter pins in over 300 different MS standard options.
Finding Standard-Compliant Fasteners
Fastener standards help industries communicate fastener requirements and characteristics in a uniform manner that ensures consistency. While they are voluntary, many applications require compliance with certain standards to meet safety or governmental regulations, so it is important to work with a fastener supplier who distributes a wide range of standard-compliant parts.
For information about the benefits of becoming a Huyett distributor and the supply chain services we offer, visit our Supply Chain Simplified resource page or call or email our Sales Team today.