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Yup - great products, but the prices are a bit high for large quantities. I've been searching around the last week or so for more 2-56 hex head stainless screws, but other than 1/4" long I cannot find any in less than 10,000 carton quantities. All the usual suppliers dont carry them anymore in steel, brass is easy to find. I have no problem making them now and then, but doing large quantities gets tedious very fast!
chris, Micro fasteners has ss screws. They are in Easton,Pa.
I've had similar issues finding #2-56 hex head screws for my models. I have been substituting #2-56 studs and nuts for them, as a solution. Could be argued that studs and nuts are actually more correct fasteners to the prototypes for many types of steam machinery. #2-56 threaded rod is still widely available and so far I have been able to get 1/8" hex size #2-56 nuts (closer to scale hex size than commercial machine screw #2-56 nuts) or have made my own. I did find some correct-size 1/8" a/f steel hex bar to make nuts with a while ago, and nuts are fast to make. However, 1/8" a/f size hex bar is getting hard to find also, which may be one reason for screws made of it are scarce. I have not looked too hard for 3 mm a/f hex stock but there does not appear to be any locally. 1/8" a/f hex stainless bar has not been available locally for some years.One other possible way would be to change over to M2 hex head bolts. They are still available a few places in the world (UK und Germany for sure) but are not cheap. Unfortunately they have 4 mm a/f hex heads, bigger than 1/8" or 3.18 mm a/f. These may not look right on a model, but you could mill the hex down to 3 mm a/f for better appearance. M2 thread is .078" OD where #2 is .086" OD. M2 has 0.4 mm or .0157" pitch where #2-56 has .0178" pitch. The M2 and #2-56 Threads are not interchangeable but are not too different in size. I would not mix metric and inch fasteners on the same model but in future I may go all metric stud/nut fasteners for some models just for availability and cost reasons, especially if I can find a bunch of 3 mm hex stainless at reasonable cost. Hope these ideas help, just food for thought.
I pretty much get all my model screws and nuts from AME, but I order only what I need and usually in the 25 count bags.
Chris,If you are thinking about switching to M2 bolts search for M2 DIN 933 which is the fully threaded version. They can be found in bulk on ebay or amazon.Dan
Chris, DIN is a German standards system that covers a lot of stuff here is a list:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_DIN_standardsDan