Knobby nuts

Having assembled and dismantled my extruder a few times I found it quite fiddly and time consuming. The reason being is that all the fasteners need either an Allen key and a spanner or two spanners. I solved this by placing shake proof washers between the screw heads and the plain washers that are there for load spreading. Only problem was I had to buy them in packs of 250 so I have enough to last the rest of my life!



The result is that once the bolts are finger tight the washers bite and hold the head so only one spanner is required to tighten the nuts.

The nuts that tighten the springs were still a bit tedious. This is because they need tightening a long way down the thread to tension the spring and you need a spanner all the way because the springs are stiff. Wing nuts are the obvious answer but I didn't have any and I am not sure whether there is room to spin them. Instead, I milled some knobs out of Perspex and tapped them to act as nuts. I have christened them knobby nuts but that probably only strikes a chord with people in the UK.