Coast Fabrication - A Great Source for Fastener Information!

A sample of a Hydraulic coupling rendered in Fusion 360

In this post, I'm actually taking a step back from directly talking about a design tool.  Instead, I'm sharing a little info on where I get the information to put my design tools

At work, one of my tasks is creating and maintaining Autodesk Inventor Content of aerospace fasteners.

And trust me, there are a lot of these fasteners around!

They can be referred to as AN (Army/Navy), MS (Mil Spec), NAS or NASM (National Aerospace Standard), and AS (SAE Aerospace).   And I'm sure I've missed a standard or two somewhere! 

That means a lot searching databases, reading charts, and sifting through a lot of tables!  

Of course that begs a big question?  Where can this data be found?  

Admittedly, it can be quite a safari.  I'm fortunate that my place of employment maintains a resource for the data.  

But not all of us have that luxury.  That means a lot of hunting around, trying to find the data we need.  

One resource I found that has been a enormous help has been the technical resource page from Coast Fabrication in Huntington Beach, California. 

More than once I've used their technical page as a quick reference for a fastener I'm using, sometimes for work but other times for personal use.  

This is just a section of the Coast Fabrication Technical page

The reason I shared this site is because I know that there are many times users need this information.  It might be to create a library of helical inserts for work, or a quick model of a hydraulic fitting for a personal project, this is a sight that is well worth the reference!

Of course, a blog post like this wouldn't be a blog post if I didn't have a disclaimer.  I'm not paid by Coast Fabrication.  I've never even visited their shop even though their only about 10 miles away from me. As a matter of fact, I'm pretty sure they don't even know I exist.  

But that's okay!  They've provided a great resource worthy of sharing, and I'm happy to help Karma return some of their goodwill!  So take a look if you're in the need for fastener specs.