Mounting prototype circuit boards to steel chassis

Plastic standoffs are available in various lengths, or you can use nylon machine screws and nuts, available at most hardware stores (look in the specialty hardware drawers, not the pre-packaged stuff). Plastic standoffs are pretty common from most any electronics catalog retailer like All Electronics.

-- Gordon

Adam wrote:

I haven't used "real" standoffs for years, since I started using those expanding sleeves for putting screws in concrete. The ones I'm talking about are just an extruded tube with ridges running lengthwise on the inside and outside. They should be available in different diameters and can be cut to length easily. Usable either with a long screw going all the way through, or two short screws in either end. Not every hardware store may have the same style of expansion sleeves though.

Just "make" stand offs, by using longer screws, and bolts between the PCB, and the chassis.

Like this

A screw goes into material without a nut. A bolt goes through a hole and is fastened by using a nut. A nut threads onto a bolt.

So the same object is a "screw" or a "bolt" depending on whether you put it in a tapped hole or put a nut on it?

Technically "bolts" are fasteners that conform to a certain sizing standard, but these days most manufacturers follow a size threshhold for calling things bolts or screws (assuming a nut is attached to either one). Bolts under maybe 1/4" are referred to as machine screws. I guess it seems a little silly to call some miniature 2-56 threaded fastener a "bolt." It's a bolt to a flea, I guess.

You would use a "bolt" to attach the valve cover onto the block of your car engine; the block is threaded and doesn't use nuts, per se, yet it's still a bolt. I don't think a self-threading fastener would ever be called a bolt. I've always seen them referred to as screws.

-- Gordon

Probably not statndard terminology, but I call something a "screw" if you install it with a screwdriver and a "bolt" if you install it with a wrench.

Except an all wrench (hex key) counts as a screwdriver.

George

What's a nut?

JM

Well, it's threaded on the inside, that's for sure. But I'm really not sure how to phrase the definition to properly distinguish between a nut and some threaded metal block. A nut only has one threaded hole, through the center, but if you were to drill a hole through the center of a manhole cover and tap it with a 6-32 tap I'd doubt if anyone would call that a nut.

George

Ayup.

I don't understand it either, but that's what I've been told.

I've also been told that a "drill" is what normal people call a "drill bit" and the machine that rotates the drill is called a "hand drill" or a "drill press" or a "drilling machine".

Jargon is strange sometimes.

-- D. jay Newman

I think I'll go with this idea, because the idea of easy variable lengths really appeals to me. Thanks, everyone, for your input. I appreciate it.

- Adam