Ersatz 5.5 mm Nut Driver

A tiny 1/4 inch hex driver handle appeared from the far reaches of a drawer, sporting a handle better suited for tweaking the 3 mm adjusting nuts on the bottom of the M2’s platform than applying actual torque to real fasteners. Rather than breaking a set of nut drivers, I made a simple brass shim to soak up the difference between the handle’s 6.5 mm ID hex and the 5.5 mm OD of the nuts:

That’s 15 mil = 0.40 mm shimstock to leave enough clearance for my crude forming technique.

Which technique consisted of making a “mandrel” by lining up a trio of Nyloc nuts on a screw, snipping off a suitable shimstock rectangle, and squashing it into shape with parallel-jaw pliers:

As you’d expect, the shimstock hex came out larger & uglier than the mandrel:

But that doesn’t matter after it’s tucked inside the driver; it works perfectly.

Took less time to do than to write up …