Short work session today. I planned on dimpling the E-615PP reinforcement plate for the trim servo, the nutplates and the cover plate.
The nutplate dimples are the one near the border of the inner cut. (two small 3/32" holes for the ears of the nutplate, a #6 for the screw itself.
The dimpling of the #6 screw hole has to be done by hand with the hand squeezer. The hole is so close to the edge of the aluminym plate that the brute force of the pneumatic squeezer would just break the edge. I read entries on the forums from different people having to reorder the piece because of this. Doing it gently by hand works well. The side curls over gently. It's actually very scary to see this happen.
The dimples of the nutplate ear are normal 3/32" dimples. I used the narrow female die (half the size of the normal one) that was provided in the avery tool kit. This works well and gives you sufficient clearence to dimple on the sides of the #6 hole. I did these with the pneumatic squeezer as they are further away from the edge. Still I did it very slowly and carefully not to distort the material.
The nutplate ears can also be dimpled. It is difficult and hard to do this by hand. For the pneumatic squeezer it's a piece of cake but you need the half size female die.
Some people prefer not to dimple and use a deburring tool to countersink the skin or plate for a NAS1097 rivet. NAS1097AD3-xx rivets have the same body diametr of AN rivets, but with a smaller head, so you just need a light countersink to fit the head.
I decided to go the old fashioned way. It's a bit more work but I prefer the additional strength of 2 dimples sitting together. I read this gives additional strength.
Here is a view on the dimpled K1100-6 nutplate ears :
Then dimpled the corver plate with #6 dies.
During dimpling of E-615PP, I made a mistake. I accidentally dimpled in the opposite direction. How stupid can you be.
There is a lot of cursing and shouting when this occurs. At least now, all my neighbours know that I made a mistake.
I posted some questions on the forum and Vans seem to say "you are allowed to reverse the dimple once while still maintaining adequate structural integrity of the part."
Nevertheless, an unacceptable failure due to non concentration during work. I told myself before this would not happen to me as I would fixate one job at a time, focussing and staying alert.
And you see... it already happened..
The circled dimple is the one... You can see that the dimple still looks good. There is just a small impression ring near the edge. There outer one is from the squeezer.
To make sure, I sent some pictures to Vans support for confirmation it's ok to continue with this part.
--------------------
Update 15/3 : Answer from Vans support on my dimple :
"In thin metal like this, you can usually reverse a dimple (and we've all done it!) without any bad effect. Yours looks fine -- it is ok to use. "
Oef... I got away with it again...