I would like to ask if anyone could please offer some advise with the following situation & questions.

Has anyone ever used the type of pushnuts sold by www.mcmaster.com as part number 94800A710 ? Do they work good ?

You can see pictures of this style of pushnut at this link...

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Mcmaster sells an installation tool as part # 93633A030 but they are$61.93 each. Is it necessary to use this Installation tool or can you just use a simple steel tube & a hammer for installation ? The price of the tool seems high for what just looks like a hardened tube with a plastic knob on it.

I have a # 10-24 socket head cap screw going through a clearance hole in a flat steel plate. The head of the screw is on one side of the plate with a delrin thrust washer between the underside of the screw head and the plate. On the other side of the plate, I have a hex nut on the screw with a delrin thrust washer between the nut and the plate. I just snug the nut down to take up any axial play in the screw & when I install the nut, I put loc-tite on it so that after the loctite dries, the nut "rotates with" the screw as the screw is rotated, but the screw cannot translate axially. The screw extends past the nut & is threaded
into a part that moves up and down in response to the clockwise or counterclockwise rotation of the screw.

The space is very limited & I am using a 5/16" wide small pattern hex nut on the screw that is only 7/64" high. I could probably fit a 1/8" high nut in there, but a nut that is any higher would be difficult. Space is limited both height and width wise. I also need to use a round push-nut as opposed the the rectangular ones. A standard hex nut is fine, but then I need to use loc-tite threadlocker on it.

I am hoping I can use the .065" thick push-nut and a delrin washer to replace the existing hex nut. This way,installation will be faster, I won't have to fool with applying loctite or waiting for it to dry. Do you think this will work well ?

If anyone has a recommendation for an alternative method or a type or brand of nut please let me know. I already tried to use small profile lock-nuts, called "top-lock" nuts by mcmaster carr, but they don't work well in this application. I could not find any other type of lock nut that was small enough. The nut presently fits into a flat bottom blind hole or pocket that has a .453" diameter. I could go to a little larger diameter, but not much.