To achieve the hold-down and release for a solar panel of micro-satellites, a small-scale fuse holding-down and release mechanism was developed. Firstly, the hold-down mechanism for measuring pretightening force was designed to acquire the twice relationship between torque and pretightening force and a determination method of pretightening force was given. Then, according to the features of rope, the unlocked mechanism with resistance regulatory function was designed to improve the adaptive capacity of power supply and to meet the requirements of rapid modularization layout of micro-satellites. Finally, a fusing characteristic experiment and the fusing parameters for the mechanism were designed to obtain the function relationship between fusing time and currents. It shows that the unlocked fusing power of this mechanism for micro-satellites is 6.25 W, the fusing time is (6±1) s. The reliability demonstration experiment was also carried out under the environments of laboratory and vacuum. The results show that the hold-down and release mechanism designed is suitable for the unfolding mechanism of micro-satellites, which is reliable work and has better universality and expansibility. It offers a certain guiding significance for design of hold-down and release devices and spatial deployable mechanisms for solar panels of micro-satellites.