Tee Nut Source

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Budro0

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I've got some various rail buttons (rail-buttons, apogee, etc) but I don't have tee nuts or blind nuts that fit. Smallest I have found locally are 6-32 but they do not fit inside the buttons. The apogee version came with tee nuts (6-32), but I have not been able to find anything similar.

Where do you all find these? Specific links would be nice. I've seen some on McMaster but not sure if the fit. I'd appreciate some confirmation. Thanks.
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The 6-32 brad-style tee nuts I purchase from Lowes fit the 10-10 rail buttons from Apogee perfectly, and they offer the advantage of having 3 brad holes that, when epoxied to the inside of the air frame, adhere both adhesively and mechanically. (Acetone-wash and rough-up the to-be-epoxied tee-nut surface with a file first, though.)

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You can take the t-nut (or the screw for it) into most hardware stores and they have a board with matching nuts/screws so you can confirm the thread size and pitch. Once you know for sure that it is 6-32 or 8-32 or 4-40 or whatever, then either a local storage will have the matching t-nut (aka weld-nut) or the vast McMaster-Carr has everything known to man (minimum buy of 100 and shipping can be $$$). They're all sized based on the matching screw so nearly all 6-32 t-nuts that fit a 6-32 screw are the same size.

t-nuts have wings that bury into wood so they won't spin once installed. weld-nuts are smooth. What you've shown are weld-nuts. McMaster has both.
 
Not to belabor the point, but I don't think the nomenclature describing this hardware is necessarily universal. While Apogee's packaging calls them weld nuts, Lowes (Hillman) categorizes both styles as T-nuts. Hillman differentiates them by "brad" style (left) and "prong" style (right). These are generally used in woodworking.

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Weld nuts, on the other hand, are generally used in welding applications, and there are a variety of styles.

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The round base style of weld nut is very similar to a woodworking t-nut, but much heavier, and designed to be welded (hence the name) to sheet metal, for example.

I use both types in building rockets, but woodworking's brad style t-nuts seem to work best in the launch button application. They're thinner and allow me to bend opposite edges of the flange ever so slightly to best conform to the inside of the airframe.
 
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I buy a lot of this kind of stuff at the local Westlake hardware store.
 
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