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No One Knows What This Tool Is !??? (Formerly WTFT?)
- Thread starter rwm
- Start date
- Joined
- Jun 29, 2014
- Messages
- 4,170
Best guess so far! Pictures!
- Joined
- Jun 29, 2014
- Messages
- 4,170
If it were machined in placed, it could imply that the tool is used for indexing - precision location to the clamp datum? If it is pressed in, it could imply it is just quickly made to give the tool some flats to clamp to?
Other than that, I think @pontiac428 may have the best guess at this point.
My thought on twisting (whatever gauge fits there) is NOT twisting multiple wires, but twisting ONE wire.
When you take a wire (especially a hard wire) from a roll or spool, it retains it's shape. One way to solve that is to hold both ends, twist one end, but keeping the wire taught, then switch direction and "untwist" it again. I doesn't make "shapes", it just introduces "different" stresses in the wire, (hopefully not too many, it'll twist right off), which (oversimplified), "releases and redirects" the pre-existing stresses. Those pre-existing stresses being the ones that are induced when the curved wire is pulled straight.
The typical way to do that is to clamp one end of the wire in a vise, and the other end in a power drill chuck. That second part gets fiddly sometimes though. Again, seriously, just speculating here, seeing what fits the "clues"...
That's a flexible mount, and it's missing stuff. Probably attached to a vise grip type plier, but occasionally on a mag base too. Yes, they are as bad as they look, if they're well made. Otherwise they're worse than they look. One star, do not recommend wasting time on making the missing stuff, as the result is not gonna be a good one. The good part of that holder was the vise grip plier. Or the mag base. What you have is "what's left".
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- Joined
- Feb 22, 2015
- Messages
- 144
In the new pic's it seems to look like a homemade tool.
The conical nose and short straight section seem like it was designed to reach into a similarly shaped recess and grab hold of a small cylindrical object and twist it in or out.
I really hope the use case for this tool is discovered because now my brain keeps coming up with off the wall ideas... like, Doc Brown used it to adjust the dielectric gap setting screw in his flux capacitor or Data used it to remove those unsightly tin whiskers from his face as he went through adolescence (they're really thick on artificial lifeforms)
On this problem I think I'm stuck on stupid. On the other hand, flip flopping back and forth between wild and reasonable ideas is what I do to solve nontrivial design problems.
The conical nose and short straight section seem like it was designed to reach into a similarly shaped recess and grab hold of a small cylindrical object and twist it in or out.
I really hope the use case for this tool is discovered because now my brain keeps coming up with off the wall ideas... like, Doc Brown used it to adjust the dielectric gap setting screw in his flux capacitor or Data used it to remove those unsightly tin whiskers from his face as he went through adolescence (they're really thick on artificial lifeforms)
On this problem I think I'm stuck on stupid. On the other hand, flip flopping back and forth between wild and reasonable ideas is what I do to solve nontrivial design problems.