Threaded fasteners are the most common method of product assembly. The primary advantage of threaded fasteners is that they permit disassembly of the parts for repair or recycling.
If, however, the parts need not or should not be taken apart, then rivets are a more cost-effective way to go. Rivets install faster than screws, and there’s no need to tap threads in the parts. With threaded fasteners, engineers rely on one variable, torque, as an indirect measure of what they really want to know, which is the clamp load on the joint. That’s not the case with riveted assemblies. With rivets, engineers can specify exactly how much force will be applied by the fasteners.