I haven’t tried them, and it took a few weeks to deliver from China, but for $14 total on AliExpress it seemed hard to go wrong:
I now have 1000 of the “via size” (0.9mm) rivets, plus 1.3 and 2.0, which should be good for emulating plated-through holes that are large enough to feed component leads through. 2500 rivets—think that’s enough…?
Aug '17Aug '17
Yeah, I guess that’s enough to last you a couple of days. 
Have you tried them yet? Will you please let us know how they work out? 
Haven’t yet, and am sidetracked on things that don’t involve PCB prototyping. Will report back as soon as I’ve tried them.
These (the 0.9mm ones) are the same as the one I bought. They were advertised as copper, but turned out to be brass.
My first test was to turn a centering punch for them on the lathe, set up a press, try on a blank PCB.
Next was going to be testing with inked boards, which would mean reworking board layouts with larger vias to suit, and then seeing whether the solder would work reliably - and of course then other work got in the way, so this is still pending!
