The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning

Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.

The New Hotness

  • Nut Socket Wrench Improvement

    The recesses in cheap 1/4-inch shank nut drivers aren’t much deeper than the nuts, which means a screw sticking out of the nut by more than a few threads defeats the entire purpose.

    Well, I can fix that:

    Drilling 5.5 mm socket
    Drilling 5.5 mm socket

    That’s a 5.5 mm socket for M3×0.5 machine screw nuts, getting a screw clearance hole drilled into it with a #28 drill (0.1405 inch = 3.5 mm). The sockets are allegedly “forged and hardened”, but an ordinary HSS drill bit cuts like they’re butter, so I’m thinking somebody skipped the hardening step.

    Turns out I had a lot of nuts to remove from black oxide M3 socket head cap screws, making a brief pause in the action totally worthwhile.