Aerospace Fasteners
Spec the right blind fastener without the guesswork.
Composi-Lok, CherryMAX, Hi-Lok, Jo-Bolt — dozens of families, opaque selection criteria, and supply & tooling reality nobody tells you about until it bites. Describe the joint; get a recommended fastener family, material, and head style — with the design rules, sourcing, and install tooling that actually matter.
The insight this tool is built on
Composite-specific blind fasteners earn their cost mainly when the blind side is composite— but that's not the whole story.
The blind bulb is the point
Composite-optimized fasteners form a blind-side bulb ~4–6× the footprint of a standard blind rivet's formed head. That distributed bearing is exactly what soft laminate needs to avoid crushing, pull-through, and delamination.
Galvanic is material-driven
Aluminum fastener + carbon fiber corrodes badly on either side of the joint — up to ~90% strength loss wet. That forces titanium or A286 regardless of which side is blind.
Head-side composite still matters
Bearing damage, CTE mismatch, and preload relaxation degrade composite joints regardless of orientation. The blind side drives the bulb; the material pair + environment drive everything else.
What's inside
Guided selector
Seven inputs → a ranked fastener family, recommended alloy & head style, and cited design-rule flags.
Open →20-family catalog
Composi-Lok, CherryMAX, Hi-Lok, Jo-Bolt and more — specs, tooling, sourcing, and citations. Searchable.
Open →Side-by-side compare
Put up to three families head-to-head across strength, bulb, temp, tooling, and lead time.
Open →Design calculators
Edge distance & pitch, and a bearing-stress check against composite and metal allowables.
Open →Part-number decoder
Paste a NAS/MS part number, brand, or alias — jump straight to the family and decode the dash codes.
Open →Deep dives
The blind-bulb mechanism, galvanic corrosion, standards, and the sourcing reality — all cited.
Open →How it works
Describe the joint
Material on each side, access, load, environment. Seven inputs — the same ones a stress engineer would ask for.
Get a ranked recommendation
A fastener family, recommended alloy and head style, plus plain-English design flags — each one cited to a source.
See the real-world reality
Install tooling and training, lead-time risk, and which distributors stock it. The stuff that decides whether you can actually buy it.