In general, our love affair with technology is creating more and more demand for security and access restriction systems, even in the industrial sector. Indeed, highly sensitive equipment must be protected against improper use, and misappropriation of innovative technology must be prevented by suitable security mechanisms.

In light of constantly evolving industrial expertise in all sectors, protection of highly sensitive equipment against unauthorised access is becoming more and more important. This applies equally well to the plastics industry, where electronics enclosures and fuse boxes containing highly sensitive devices and components must be protected against improper use and unauthorised access, and to the renewable energy sector, where solar modules must be protected against theft. In both cases, intelligent security mechanisms that ensure operational security are necessary.

In these years, using special fasteners to secure such equipment has been common practice. A wide variety of more or less practical solutions have been devised. For instance, new tamper-proof fastenersystem provides maximum security, which can not only prevent loosened by using conventional means, but also reduces costs by eliminating supplementary assembly and material. With the existing fastener systems, easy interchangeability is ensured. Besides, breakaway screws and nuts, secure drive systems that require special tools for loosening, and hammering small ball bearings into drive recesses. The main areas where improvement is needed are enhancing the reliability of tampering protection, increasing installation speed, and preventing injuries from protruding sharp edges or the like.

This system combines a special screw drive geometry with a special assembly tool, which makes it impossible to loosen or remove the fasteners without destroying the joint. Therein, the screw head has a special drive recess that only allows the fastener to be screwed in with a matching tool. And countless combinations of this sort are available. However, the special tools necessary for dismantling them have now become freely available on the Internet in most cases. After assembly, the flank shape of the drive recess makes it impossible to loosen the screw, even with the special tool. Attempting to do so causes the tool to rotate out of the screw head on its own. Dismantling is only possible by drilling out the screw or cutting a slot in the screw head. Both options void the warranty, and they hinder theft due to the considerable amount of noise generated by these processes.

The traditional security measures, such as ball bearings, locknuts or thread locking compounds, are no longer necessary because using these measures leads to enormous cost savings. Furthermore, there is no need to modify the fixing device, the joint or the process technology. Therefore, try to take tamper-proof fasteners into consideration before doing your jobs.