When an application requires two thin metal sheets to be joined permanently face-to-face, designers routinely have turned to rivets, welding, or adhesives and tapes. But tradeoffs loom with each of these methods. An innovative fastener design using clinch technology provides a more practical and less complicated joining method that is able to perform multiple functions and expand design possibilities.
Tubing, cylindrical housings, and similar shapes often pose joining challenges. Crimping and pressing operations have been frequently used to form an edge on such shapes as a means of joining them to another part or to enclose an assembly of parts, but those methods have their drawbacks.
Carbon dioxide found popularity as a refrigerant for comfort cooling in the 1920s, before being replaced by more convenient CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) in the 1930s and then HFCs (hydroflurocarbons) in the 1990s. But with the Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty requiring industrialized nations to lower their collective greenhouse gases 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012, carbon dioxide has come back into the limelight as a hope for a safe and effective refrigerant replacement.