I know this is kinda of a stupid question.
I’m using a 4mm TPE sheet as a gasket between the enclosure and the bottom of the board. It’s held on by 24 screws threading into brass inserts. Sooooo…how tighten should those screws be tightened? I could crank them down and completely crush the TPE, but if they’re too loose then they could loosen and fall out. My initial thought was use thread locker and just snug them down, but I figured it’s smarter to ask first.
This is the typical way to do it, @DEEIF uses a special method where he puts a rubber washer underneath the bolt washers to help keep them from backing out
Yes, current strategy is as follows
Bolt
Fender Washer
Regular 1mm or 2mm washer
M4 rubber oring
Hand tight and then quarter turn past.
Threadlocker on threads & potentially a small piece of butyl tape under the cap of the screw (or even down into the insert) can help a lot with retainment
Okay, so then I’m made them too tight. Hopefully I won’t need to cut a new gasket.
Oh well. Try, learn, do better.
I can’t imagine any reason the gasket would be damaged. TPE is an elastomer (what the E actually stands for)
Just a heads up if you weren’t already aware tho, leather hole punches, which are cheap as shit for a full set on Amazon (like $10), are really nice for making uniform screw holes in gasket material. Looks professional but is also highly functional, sad I didn’t think of them the first time I razor knife’d out all of the holes.
Double sided tape is awesome as well.
I use to loctite everything but I like to be able to get In my enclosure easily if needed,now I use BIG nutserts and M8 8mm hex bolts and 3 singular strips of weather foam around the whole enclosure! Now it is easily accessible if needed and these big bolts hardly back out at all if I crank down on the weather strips,a big plus is I only need 6 of these bolts and nutsert to hold on my @BigBen enclosure!
Also fully waterproof,left in torrential rain locked up for over an hour down the beach! No.problems!
