pin fastener

pin fastener, a steel pin, usually cylindrical, that can keep machine parts in proper alignment or fasten them together. The illustration shows several types of pin fasteners in common use.

Hardened and precisely shaped dowel pins are used to keep machine components in accurate alignment; they are also used as location guides for adjacent machine parts and to keep the two sections of a punch and die in alignment.

The taper pin provides a cheap, convenient method of fixing the hub of a gear or a pulley to a shaft. The pin is driven into a tapered hole that extends radially through the hub and shaft.

The split cotter pin is used to prevent nuts from turning on bolts and to keep loosely fitting pins in place. The head of the nut has radial slots aligned with one of the radial holes in the bolt. The pin is a loose fit in the hole and is kept in place by spreading the ends. The clevis pin is a fastening device with a flange at one end and is kept in place by a cotter pin inserted through a hole in the other end.

The spring pin is a split tube with a slightly larger diameter than the hole into which it is placed. The pin is compressed when driven into the hole and exerts a spring pressure against the wall of the hole to create a frictional locking grip. These pins can be removed and reused without appreciable loss of effectiveness; they are widely used for attaching lightly loaded pulleys and gears to shafts.

Groove pins are solid pins with longitudinal grooves produced by upsetting the metal so that it interferes with the walls of the hole when the pin is driven in.