Connecting Castings

Lesson: Integrating and Connecting Castings

Your imagination is the limit for using your cast pieces. You can integrate the plastic and resin with metal either by casting directly into/onto your metal piece or by attaching it afterwards.

You can also link castings together directly.

Riveting:

Many of the rivets you learned in Intro 1 can be applied to other materials- like resin and plastic! Standard, tube, step, and ball rivets all work well. Flush rivets can be trickier, but may work as well. The danger with flush rivets is potential cracking of the plastic.

Grommets:

Grommets are similar to tube rivets- just in 2 parts. Grommets come in a variety of sizes and shapes, toothed edges and smooth. Toothed grommets are good for material you need to grip, but grommets are better at holding material than rivets since they have a slightly cupped shape.

Grommets are best set with the appropriate size setting tool. In a pinch, you can set them with a hammer but then you run the risk of flattening and deforming the grommet. Grommets are commonly used for areas around lacing or rope to prevent those edges for fraying or tearing due to the pressure laces put on them.

Screws:

Screws (especially the mini screws from Reactive Metals) are a great way to connect a variety of materials together neatly. Reactive Metals carries a selection of mini screws with bolts and nuts to match. They also sell the threaded rod which you can solder your own head onto for more personalization.

To use, simply drill a hole in your pieces, and feed the screw through. Tighten the nut on the reverse.

Reactive Metals’ screws and nuts are brass, so they can be soldered and cut.

Adhesives:

Glue is not a 4 letter word in Alternative Materials. Sometimes it is the best way to connect pieces together. Epoxy-based glues work better than cyanoacrylates (super or crazy glue) as they dry with some flexibility.

There is also plastic weld, but it only works on certain types of plastics. Check the products before using.

One great glue is Stik-n-Seal. This is a one part waterproof epoxy that glues just about everything.