Engineers at a major manufacturer of portable electronic devices had a problem. They needed to rivet a small, thin electrical contact to the device’s charger subassembly, but how could they head the tiny rivets—0.02 to 0.03 inch in diameter—without crushing the assembly?
“We’re talking pinhead-sized rivets,” recalls Chuck
Rupprecht, vice president and general manager of Baltec Corp. “The application required very low force—below 1.5 kilonewtons.”