Grover washer - a simple solution to a complex problem

2024 Author: Howard Calhoun | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 10:16

Washers are called fasteners made of various materials, mainly metal or plastic. Their shape is most often annular, but it can also be different (square, rectangular and even polygonal). They are designed to distribute the load when driving nuts, screws, screws, bolts, studs and other threaded fasteners, to prevent dents and other damage, and to ensure good electrical contact.

But there is also an unusual puck. The grower has a special purpose.

Technical problem and solution

The rapid development of mechanical engineering, which occurred in the second half of the XIX century, revealed a significant lack of threaded connections. Mechanical loads, vibration and various vibrations of the moving parts of the mechanism units caused, in addition to fatigue failures, the threat of spontaneous reduction in their strength.connections. Nuts and bolts were unscrewed, and in order to control their condition, effort and time were required. At the same time, riveted joints, which were an alternative to threaded ones, made disassembly and, consequently, maintenance of equipment, which became more and more difficult, difficult. A special washer-grower was the solution to this problem.

Working principle

Everything ingenious is arranged simply, but it works flawlessly. Grover washer is a single coil spring or a slotted ring, slightly bent so that the gap diverges in a direction that prevents the nut from rotating when it is unscrewed. During the forward stroke, nothing interferes with the movement of the fastening unit, consisting of a bolt (screw or stud) and a nut. But when you try to rotate it in the opposite direction, the sharp edge digs into the metal and makes this action difficult.

Where did the name "grover" come from?

There are two main versions of why the spring washer is called so. According to the first, the name of the inventor was immortalized. This assumption is supported by the fact that until the beginning of the fifties the word "Grover" in Soviet technical documentation was written with a capital letter. After the campaign against foreign words began in the USSR, according to the then linguists, who only clogged the “great and mighty”, transistors began to be called triodes, resistors - resistances, and the Grover washer was renamed into a spring one, or in extreme cases it was recommended to write this lowercase term.

The second version of the origin of the term is based on its alleged relationship with the English word "Grow", meaning "growth". If you think figuratively, then the stronger the fastening connection is clamped, the more it resists, due to its spring nature, the Grover washer. And when unscrewing, it straightens, and its maximum transverse dimension increases, that is, grows.

All fasteners produced in our country are strictly standardized. The puck-grover is no exception. GOST 6402-70 clearly regulates the mechanical properties of "spring washers", the materials from which they are made, and the geometric dimensions by which they are made. There is nothing surprising in this, the safety of operation of a complex machine may depend on this, at first glance, a secondary assembly unit.