Request for BOM information

Yeah, I hear you. What really pisses me off is when you use the drive bit provided in the same packet of screws and have problems.

I must say that most problems I've had have been with 304 stainless screws. I suspect they're just too soft. The plated steel ones (not for boat use by me, just general cabinet work) are much better IME. The bits tend to round off instead :-(

PDW

 

Agree 100% on the softness of stainless -- The problem,along with the metal charateristics itself, there is such is poor standardization amoung manufacturers. The 11th commandment --Thou shall pray first, use a multi bore bit and wax when working with stainless screws. Stumble, here's possibly the biggest selling feature of Titanium, and as a by product getting more souls into heaven. Seriously Greg this alone has awakened my interest in your product.

 

I know we make square drive fasteners, but I haven't played with them yet to see how closely they match the standards. Given the tolerances we typically work to I would imagine they are pretty close to whatever standard they were designed to match. I can pull the CAD drawing to compare if anyone knows the specs on the square drives.

Right now the biggest price driver is actually the number of parts used. Because we make so few fasteners compared to the stainless guys our cost to set up are much higher, and our machinery doesn't run as full speed as the stainless manufacturers do. This is slowly getting better as more people are adopting titanium, but it is a slow process.

 

Ti screws have an application outside boats. Timber decks comes to mind. I think I used over 2000 screws there, all Robertson drive, into hardwood. I pre-drilled every hole and still had problems.

PDW

 

PDW,

Not that they wouldn't work, but I wonder about the cost. I don't now that you would get enough value from using them to justify the extra cost.

Just to see I ran the numbers and a 25lb box of #10 3" deck screws is about $100. We don't make anything that corse threaded right now, so I ran the numbers using sheet metal screws hitch is the closest we have.

25lbs of screws would work out to about 11.4kg. Each screw would weigh in at .0045kg so we need 2,519 to make up 25lbs. Since they are half the weight, lets assume there are 1250 screws in the steel box, to buy titanium the cost for that would run about $1,800.

It's doable, but I don't think there would be enough advantage. Unless you live somewhere that deck screw corrosion is a major problem, or really don't want to ever replace them.


The upside is when the wood rots you can save the screws and reuse them.