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Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

Right. There are many structural pipe fitting systems. Here's one.[1] Grainger, McMaster-Carr, and larger hardware stores stock them. Usually, they use bigger pipe. Fittings are really cheap on Alibaba.

[1] https://www.easyfit.com/catalog

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What are the right keywords to use when searching for the fittings?

My ali efforts often get flooded with nonsense.

Pipe racking connector

Modular pipe connector

Those do okay without you getting hundreds of irrelevant air hose fittings

If it is structural I'd buy from a big place not Ali. Unless you have the ability to verify the material really has the claimed properties you need you should stick with a major trusted supplier who will either verify the factory produces fittings to spec, or test everything for you.

Paying big bucks for a paper trail is almost never cost or time effective compared to just adding safety factor for "normal applications".

And by "normal applications" I mean "please nobody be intentionally obtuse and start nit picking about aerospace applications and connecting rod bolts and whatnot".

I would nit-pick about your cantilever worktable failing because of a crappy fastener, killing your cat. Child even?

There will always be a weakest link. At some point you just gotta be an adult and not build things to within an inch of their lives for the use they will see and then have the self control to not push the limit. Resources are limited and engineering tradeoffs are everywhere. These discussions always devolve into absurdity very quickly.

“Don’t buy fittings made from Chinese pot metal” is a simple way to avoid catastrophic failure due to substandard materials.

It just isn’t very absurd to worry that the question mark brand of load bearing fasteners are properly rated.

I avoid the issue by not buying them, a lesson learned from my experience working in the QA field. I wouldn’t expect a teenager to have learned this lesson.

I don't need the paper trail just the quality it provide. That is often available for much less.

If it is to support a human I would tend to agree, but for desks etc. I have found local supplies (Canada) have declined in quality to such a degree they need the level of QA on arrival the Chinese ones do while costing 5-10x as much.

unfortunately the big box stores do not check quality. mcmaster which was pointed out above does and is a similar price. I am not sure about granger.

If you're buying hardware that has any possibility of harming someone or doing any amount of non-trivial damage if it fails from AliExpress or Amazon, you're doing it wrong and should reconsider whatever it is you're doing. Even the hardware from HD is generally pretty shitty these days. If you can't afford or won't go buy it from Fastenal or MMC or somewhere reputable, where you can expect the hardware you're buying actually adheres to a stated grade or spec, you just shouldn't do it.

I don’t know what you lot think is so dangerous about a few supports for netting that keeps the squirrels off the vegetables. Please spare us the safety lectures, we are adults.

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