Product Spotlight: M18 FUEL™ 1/4” Blind Rivet Tool

The new M18 FUEL™ 1/4” Blind Rivet Tool, from Milwaukee®, is here! This tool represents Milwaukee’s commitment to providing performance-driven, trade-focused, and system-wide solutions that help you become more productive, get more value, and enjoy a far superior experience when installing blind rivets. 

The M12™ Rivet Tool revolutionized the riveting process as a replacement for hand tools with fast, easy riveting (requiring 65% less muscle effort) back in 2018. Now, the M18 FUEL™ 1/4” Blind Rivet Tool packs significant speed and durability improvements for trades that need the most performance. This tool:

• delivers up to 50% faster rivet installations than cordless competitors
• has a 3X longer life than other cordless rivet tools
• eliminates the need for hoses and compressors (say goodbye to unwieldy, noisy pneumatic rivet guns!) 

History of Riveting  

Riveting might spring to mind early WW2 imagery. Rosie the Riveter, a cultural icon, represented the women who worked in factories and shipyards producing war supplies. Before pneumatic rivet guns existed, riveting required an even more laborious process of hammering hot metal rivets and bushings to hold structures together.  

While solutions in this space have vastly multiplied, historically, riveting has been accomplished through one of two available solutions: hand tools and pneumatic tools. Neither is without its drawbacks.  

Riveting Hand Tools 

Hand tools are slow and repetitive to use, offering little productivity when professional users are completing big jobs requiring solutions that offer fast installation speeds and better ergonomics for greater maneuverability and ease of use. They’re also not typically designed with ergonomics in mind. For example, using them requires two hands and they often won’t fit when working in tight areas.  

Pneumatic Riveting Tools 

Meanwhile, pneumatic options offer little improvements to their hand tool alternative. They’re unwieldy, offering poor ergonomics and limited maneuverability. Operating them requires the use of long cords that create trip hazards. They’re excessively noisy, especially in indoor shops where their presence becomes immediately apparent by the amplified noise they emit.  

On top of all these frustrations, the cost of owning one of these machines offers little relief—a substantial sticker price is only added to with the routine tool and compressor maintenance they require. What’s worse, with such high cost associated, they also frequently become lost to theft, further draining shops financially with replacement machines needing to be purchased. 

The Entrance of Cordless Rivet Tools  

With the advent of cordless power tool technology, cordless riveting options have flooded the market—but, again, not without their faults: 

• The slow blind rivet installation speeds of these solutions decrease productivity. 
• These tools experience a limited life due to motor and drop durability limitations.  
• The jaws on these tools need to be replaced frequently, adding additional long-term expense. 

Enter: M18 FUEL™ 1/4” Blind Rivet Tool w/ ONE-KEY™, the Industry’s Fastest Riveting Tool  

Milwaukee’s M18 FUEL™ 1/4” Blind Rivet Tool is engineered to solve all of these above-mentioned frustrations—those experienced with hand tools, pneumatic tools, and cordless solutions currently on the market. 

To start, it’s the industry’s fastest cordless riveting tool, delivering up to 50% faster rivet installs when compared to the leading cordless competitor. It’s also versatile, installing 3/16”, 7/32”, ¼”, and 9/32” rivet sizes in aluminum, steel, and stainless-steel materials. It’s likewise heavy duty and durable, designed to withstand drops, and capable of delivering over 500 ¼” Aluminum rivets on a single 2.0Ah battery charge. 

What’s more, this tool is compatible with ONE-KEY™, which you can use for free to track, secure, and manage it via our industry-leading Bluetooth™ tracking community, which sees 6 million location updates per day! This feature can offer you peace of mind where other costly pneumatic machines may have caused unneeded stress.  

Additional features: 

• On-board nose piece & wrench storage 
• LED light 
• Increased portability and access 
• More ergonomic  
• Lower cost of ownership 
• No routine tool maintenance  
• No trip hazards (cordless!)  
• Part of 200+ solution on the M18™ Battery System 

Learn more about the M18 FUEL™ 1/4” Blind Rivet Tool and the M12™ Cordless System!