How can I find it, I don't know what it's called!

Have you ever tried to search for a particular item using the internet, but you didn’t know it’s name? Perhaps a song by an unknown artist or a certain vacation resort but didn’t know the name of the town? I once asked my friend, a music VP……. “hey you know that song and within the 5th sentence the lyrics sound like*****” ? ……..“ahh…..no….”. Alrighty now……..

I think we have all fallen into this time trap of searching.

Several years ago I was approached by Kinecta FCU to engineer a sign that would elegantly display a poster on an easel incorporating a "take-one" pocket. The poster was mounted to Sintra (rigid foam board) and the pocket would need to hold 50 sheets of a standard printed flyer “this week’s special offer”. So I designed a pocket that stood out from the base poster using a pre-drilled sheet of plexiglass (clear acrylic plastic) with 5 holes. Through each hole we installed a small decorative socket head screw which held the pocket to the poster and provided the framework for the printed sheets to reside.

Now I needed to find those hollow round rods that could keep the pocket properly spaced from the poster….but what were they called? I spent perhaps a half hour searching various websites until I came across the answer. It was a frustrating experience somewhat akin to a real life “charades”.

They are called standoffs. Unthreaded hollow rod trimmed to a specific length is generally called a spacer. If the rod is internally threaded it’s called a standoff. Which dear reader brings me to the point of this week’s blog post……. useful information about standoffs.

Standoff systems are used for retail displays, wall graphics, furniture, signs including ADA wayfinding and architectural detailing. Each system has a fastener component, a barrel and a head. The systems are generally available in a variety of lengths starting from 3/8” depth to 2” depth (with exceptions). The diameter of the barrels and heads start at 3/8”. There are some common head designs and some fancy designs more often used for architectural hardware.

The common colors are anodized aluminum, stainless steel and brass. One particular line is available in standard colors primarily for graphic display work.

When we use standoffs for display graphics (acrylic and Sintra) the first step is to drill holes through the substrate. The substrate is then placed against the wall and the drill locations transferred to the wall (have your pencil handy). The wall holes are drilled and an appropriate fastener is selected. The standoff barrels are then mounted to the wall; the substrate is then placed against the barrels and the head attached to each barrel.

Some standoff systems use an edge mount style, more common in the glazing industry (glass/mirror).

I’ve attached a number of images to this post. As you can see there are a variety of standoff systems available running from mild to wild. Now you know what those round metal things are called!