The New Hotness

Many of my solid models have holes for alignment pins made from filament snippets that let me glue the pieces together with near-perfect registration:

A reader who designs oil-field equipment for a living pointed out that, in his world, they’re called “stabbing guides”:

He specifies steel plate and welding instructions:

Stabbing guides for large modules may rise 25 feet above the deck plates…

After they install all the little bits on a “part” like this:

It fits neatly atop the stabbing guides and gets welded to a somewhat larger structure:

No sissy plastic for him!

My puny pins don’t qualify as stabbing guides, but forgive me if I sneak the term in every now and then…

Thanks, Tom!