I did some blind riveting yesterday, and started to have problems that seemed to escalate. Riveting my bulkhead caps on with LP4-3 blind rivets using the swivel head pop rivet tool supplied by Cleaveland Tool in 2015 (they sell an almost identical puller with a different brand name now; don't know if that's an issue). We've all had blind rivet mandrels pop in the wrong place, leaving a long tail. Well, yesterday it started happening a LOT... by the time I was done, I'd say one out of four mandrels broke in the wrong place.
When this happens, the internal jaws can no longer get any purchase on the mandrel, and I had to remove the interchangeable nose piece to get the jaws to engage. I had to make a steel spacer with a mandrel-sized hole drilled in it to act as a nose buck, and getting the long mandrel tails to break inside the rivet took a TREMENDOUS amount of force. Not sure what's going on here; I disassembled and inspected the tool; nothing seemed amiss. It was a mixed batch of LP4-3 rivets supplied at different times; could I have some bad rivets? I don't know much about the physical properties of the LP4-3 rivets, and I'm confused about why some rivets popped correctly and fairly easily, and the huge increase of effort it took to pop the ones that didn't pop correctly. What am I missing here? I will be making inquiries to Cleaveland Tool and Van's... but wanted to get VAF input as well.
When this happens, the internal jaws can no longer get any purchase on the mandrel, and I had to remove the interchangeable nose piece to get the jaws to engage. I had to make a steel spacer with a mandrel-sized hole drilled in it to act as a nose buck, and getting the long mandrel tails to break inside the rivet took a TREMENDOUS amount of force. Not sure what's going on here; I disassembled and inspected the tool; nothing seemed amiss. It was a mixed batch of LP4-3 rivets supplied at different times; could I have some bad rivets? I don't know much about the physical properties of the LP4-3 rivets, and I'm confused about why some rivets popped correctly and fairly easily, and the huge increase of effort it took to pop the ones that didn't pop correctly. What am I missing here? I will be making inquiries to Cleaveland Tool and Van's... but wanted to get VAF input as well.