Anchor nuts are hardware fasteners with a threaded hole that can be attached to a work surface with rivets or screws. They are an alternative to driving threads into a work surface and ensure exact placement of nuts or screws. Anchor nuts were developed to address issues in the aerospace industry and are also used in the automotive industry and furniture. They can be made of steel or other hard metal and have one or more protrusions with holes for rivets or screws. Rivets are the preferred fastener, but anchor nuts can also be welded into the work surface. They are sometimes called plate nuts and can be stamped from a single piece of sheet metal or attached to a long tube with internal threads. Floating anchor nuts are used when there is the possibility of misalignment.
An anchor nut is a hardware fastener with a threaded hole through it, that is attached to a work surface, usually by rivets or screws. Anchor nuts are an alternative to driving threads into a work surface, especially in places that are hard to reach for such a purpose or that are not thick enough. Additionally, using an anchor nut is a reliable way to ensure exact placement of nuts or screws when attaching additional components to the workpiece.
In the aerospace industry, significant problems arose when nuts were welded onto work surfaces. The heat associated with welding sometimes deforms and weakens the work surface, and the welds themselves sometimes fail under the high stresses associated with aerospace applications. The work surfaces themselves were often too thin to thread to accept screws or bolts, even when they were strong enough to carry the load those nuts were meant to secure. Anchor nuts were developed to address these issues and later found great popularity in the automotive industry as well. Anchor nuts are also used in other applications including decorative fasteners on furniture.
Made of steel or other hard metal suitable for hardware, an anchor nut consists of the nut itself with one or more protrusions, or lugs, with holes for the rivets or screws to secure it to the workpiece. When an anchor nut has only one lug protruding, the lug will have two holes. Two-lug anchor nuts have a single hole in each lug, which can protrude from opposite sides of the nut or at right angles to each other, depending on the configuration of the work surface.
Some anchor nuts do not have wings, but are designed to be integrated directly into the workpiece. Some, called roadplate nuts, are disc-shaped, with tapered edges and the threaded hole cut right in the center. Others, often hexagonal in shape, are forced into a suitably shaped hole in the worktop.
Rivets are the preferred fastener for anchor nuts because they are relatively easy to use and will not loosen or fall apart in most industrial and mechanical environments. An anchor nut can also be welded into the work surface, although this is not appropriate for some high-stress applications such as aerospace. Securing the anchor nut with rivets, screws, or welding distributes the stress across two points instead of concentrating it in one location, which is one of the drawbacks of tapping the threads into the work surface itself, if it were thick enough to be tapped.
Anchor nuts are sometimes called plate nuts when they are stamped from a single piece of sheet metal, flat or dimpled, thick enough to drill a hole and thread. Alternatively, and especially when the plate nut is ridged, a long tube with internal threads can be attached to the plate to accept a screw or bolt. When there is the possibility of misalignment of manufactured parts, it is sometimes advisable to use floating anchor nuts, which have a controlled degree of movement.
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