Nuts

All About Cap Nuts Transcript

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Bob: Welcome back to Albany County Fasteners, Fasteners 101. I'm Bob and today we're going to discuss high crown and too tall cap nuts. So let's get started.

I have cap nuts here. I have a standard cap nut that you'll find almost anywhere. I have what they call a high crown and you can see, the crown's a little higher. It's probably somewhere about, I would say about, a heavy 3/8 of an inch taller than a standard cap nut. Then we have too tall. We have a too tall in a flat head and we have too tall in a rounded head.

Now the two tall come fully threaded all the way through the inside to the top. So you have full threads all the way through. You have on the too tall what they call a flat top. You can see the top is flat and it has a chamfered edge around it and on the round the top is just rounded over like the standard cap nut at the top.

They call these too tool because they're approximately, if you took the high crowns, double the height almost. But if you had two high crowns, I don't have two high crowns here but if I did, it would be close to this size and that's why they call it a too tall.

These are USA made products, they're made here in the USA. They're quality products. These are 18-8 stainless steel. They're available on our shelf ready to ship.

The question always comes up "what do I use for different things"? Depends on your application. So many different applications out there. How far is your threaded bolt sticking out on the other end? If it was sticking out that much, you couldn't use a standard cap nut. You're going to see probably about a 1/4" - 3/8" of an inch sticking out. If that was the application. So, then you would go to the high crown.

I'll just keep my finger there as a stop, and that just makes it. Those are the different applications. This one, which is double tall, will keep on going and, just so you know, you will get some gulling because the difference here with stainless steel is that you have a rolled thread on the bolt and on the actual cap nut you have cut threads. So you have two different threads running against each other which creates gulling. You can use some lubricant. That works well.

I just want to show you on this how far this will go in. So you're looking at a good 1-1/2" of this 2" bolt, that I have here. It'll go all the way in to this cap nut and there it is.

As far as applications go, there are many different applications. I've seen these used for - they get polished up - some people will take them and polish them up. Polished stainless is amazing - the way it looks. They'll take them and put them on their trucks and their cars just for the look. It's all dependent on application.

Here at my packaging machine, I want to demonstrate to you how they incorporated a cap nut. This is a standard cap nut. This is the bowl where the fasteners go in. This is a feeder and they used a cap nut, at the top, along with a lock washer to hold this cone in place so the fasteners don't build up and around the center of the machine. Here they used a standard cap nut with a lock washer to hold this cone in place.

You could also, in this application, use any of them. Here's a high crown, that works on there, and here's a double tall. You can use that on there. This is actually a lot easier because sometimes the small little fasteners that we put in this machine, they get underneath this cone a little bit. They jam under there and you have to take this off. That's why they make it so you can screw it off with your fingers. I just used the top round one.

That's pretty cool looking, but functionally it doesn't matter. The standard that comes with the machine, you can see here, the standard cap nut, finishes it off nice. Nothing can build on top during fastener jobs.

Little fasteners, like a two point five millimeter falling on top won't stay on top of this nut. It just falls off and that's just the design. I just wanted to show you on my packaging machine how that could be applied.

Using Jam Nuts Transcript

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Bob: This is what they call a jam nut. Jam nuts are about half the size of a regular finish nut in height. Otherwise the circumference and everything else is the same; they use the same wrench to apply the nut and to remove the nut.

Jam nuts, just to give you an idea what these do, you use two nuts together and then you tighten them up against each other. That's why they call them jam nuts: you use them together, you tighten them up, and I'll show you. I'll do a demonstration of that also, but typically that's how they're used. They're also used in tight areas where you can't have a full-size nut.

So I'm going to demonstrate the installation of the jam nuts that I have here. I have two of them. Jam nuts are also called thin nuts. The difference is that they're about half the size of a regular nut. You can see that here.

I'm going to put the first one on and then I'm going to put the second one on. I'm going to use an adjustable wrench to grab the bottom nut. Then I'm going to use the ratchet on the top to tighten it up.

Now I'm tightening them up against each other. That's one of the reasons why they call them jam nuts. Jam nuts are also available in nylon lock nuts where you don't have to use this situation. Obviously jam nuts can be used in many different applications such as if you have a tight area like in a car application where you don't have the room to use a regular sized nut. They'll use jam nuts or a single jam nut to get on the back of an alternator for a bracket; something along those lines. They also use the nylons in that situation.

So there's many different situations that you can use this in. They also sometimes want to put a jam nut like this to wherever it's keeping in place. They want this whole mechanism to be able to turn and move because they might be a moving arm on this bolt holding it in place. They also are used with shoulder bolts. So you'll find jam nuts used with shoulder bolts a lot on mechanical equipment. However you should know that if this is being used in a vibrating machine or something along those lines, these do have a tendency to loosen apart.

So if you want them to stay use some Loctite or some other locking product to keep them in place like they are here. And that's it.