Material Sourcing – Plastic Snaps

don't you have to buy a press to use this type of snap?

-Tim

Yes, I believe so. A hand press is only about $40.00. I sell a lot of tarps so it'd be worth it.

Here's what my searching has come up with thus far – any more thoughts would be great.

http://verybaby.com/notions/plastic-snaps-industrial-and-standard

http://www.kingrichardco.com/Snaps/plasticsnaps.htm

My only question is, what is the release strength of these snaps? Neither supplier seems to provide that information.

Hi Tim and all

> don't you have to buy a press to use this type of snap?
Yes, and no. You do need a tool of some sort to set the pin in the snaps, but you don't have to buy a whole press for this. A good drill-press with a clamped vice suffices.

The tooling needed is pretty simple. I made my own tooling out of 1/4" steel rod, as shown in my poncho article at
http://www.backpackinglight.com/cgi-bin/backpackinglight/myog_mntn_poncho.html
Alternately you could probably just buy the tool bits without the press.

The snaps are available from a variety of on-line sources such as
http://myebestbuy.com/index.aspx
http://verybaby.com/notions/plastic-snaps-industrial-and-standard
http://thesnapstore.com/catalog/index.php
and I am sure many others.

Holding forces for plastic snaps – unknown, unspecified, and unspecifiable. For a start, it will depend hugely on the temperature of the plastic. Metal snaps can be specified.

Cheers

One of the members here offered a press and a bunch of snaps for sale about a week ago.

Don't look for it, I bought it.

This is the one I got:

Snap Press:

http://myebestbuy.com/hsf-1handpressmachines1set.aspx

Snaps:

http://thesnapstore.com/

Vertical release pressure on the (3/8" #15) Scovill snap sets, in nickel, average 1.5 lbs.

Patagonia Micropuff vest (1/2" #20) snaps, in plastic, average 2.2 lbs.

Standard size (5/8" #24) DOT snap sets, in nickel, average 3 lbs.

I used Rochford standard (5/8" #24) sized hard action snap sets, in nickel, on my most recent DIY project. The four component pieces weighed 4.1 g (.14 oz) combined and the vertical release pressure averaged 7.1 lbs.

Richard the information you supply to this blog is really incredible. Thank you and no need to respond.

Thanks so much gang.

I also ran into one more, YKK snaps pointed me in their direction.

That large snap press looks nice. Once I get some samples and figure out what works for my application – I'll probably go ahead and get either that one or something similar. Thanks for the link.

http://thesnapstore.com/

Oh, and thanks very much for the tension numbers! Big help.