Ballinator – History & Lore of 32nd of an Inch Bolts
An evening pause: Some engineering history for the weekend. I know the title makes this sound boring, but it is worth watching, because it illustrates the incredible complexity of some of what we think are the simplest tools. I wonder if the engineers in the space business are thinking about these issues.
Hat tip Mike Nelson.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
An evening pause: Some engineering history for the weekend. I know the title makes this sound boring, but it is worth watching, because it illustrates the incredible complexity of some of what we think are the simplest tools. I wonder if the engineers in the space business are thinking about these issues.
Hat tip Mike Nelson.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
All the dimension tables made my hair hurt & triggered brain fog. At the end of the day I will still rummage through my assortments of wrenches and sockets and, through trial and error, use the one that fits. The can of Old Milwaukee at the end looked refreshing.
Regarding engineers in the space business thinking about these issues, I would think yes, very important. During extravehicular tasks involving nuts and bolts there is no time to be floating back and forth to the tool box to find the tool that fits.
A very long time ago, I worked in a bike shop that sold Raleigh bicycles. There were some models of Raleigh bikes that had an interesting assortment of parts standards, including imperial, metric, and Whitworth bolts. Whitworth nuts are measured point-to-point, rather than flat-to-flat. The bikes were sold with a hand tool that had cut-outs to fit those Whitworth bolts.
Mein Gott, but that guy’s got an annoying, nasal voice! It danged near made me not watch more than 30 seconds of the video. Cringe.
It takes folks like him to keep the world working….unlike, say
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Williams_(media_personality)
I like Adam Savage—folks here may not like his politics—but his fondness for prop blasters and guns points towards his stance as a cover:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jxDSEulomCg&pp=ygUJI3Byb3BzcGVy
Larry:
I concur.
painful.
Should I be embarrassed for having most of those tools and sizes in the opening of his presentation?
SI (standard instruments) and SAE differences have always given me issues… But he didn’t even cover “metric” which adds a whole new complication to “”everything””.
For instance there is no equivalent in manufacturing, only getting it “close”… For instance tools made in China on metric machines can only get sizes “close” to standard because measurements in millimeters have no equivalent and are slightly off to fractions of an inch… which means their parts and tools usually don’t fit American bolts and nuts.
True, but I actually think some looser tolerances are good.
Jamie Hyneman loves the monkey wrench in that it has a lot of ‘slop.’
He hates how today’s CAD/CAM bunch don’t think about repairs when they cram stuff in.
Jamie had to take a fender off just to get at battery.
Just try to collect all the automotive and motorcycle spark plug wrenches and sockets.
You would think they would have settled on just a few. But everyone had to have their own.
When I was in design, I worked with many fasteners. Fasteners could be a significant portion of the weight of the science instruments that I designed, especially when the flange for the fasteners was considered. Using additive manufacturing (3-D printing) to eliminate the flanges and fasteners is one of the reasons why the Raptor 3 rocket engine is so much lighter than the Raptor 2.
I tended to avoid the hex head screws on flight hardware, because the heads had more material and weighed a little more. In addition to that, the clearance needed for the wrench tended to result in larger flanges. Socket head cap screws tended to be smaller and could use more compact tools to torque them properly.
Aerospace has a couple of its own screw specifications (National Aerospace Standard), where the threads conform to UNC and UNF. These specs included more that thread form, such as material strength, surface treatments, self-locking mechanisms, and the like.
I once made a gizmo that had a commercial cameral lens screw onto it, but I could not find the thread profile to put onto the drawing for the machinist to use for the mating threads. It was definitely not UNF. He told me to give him the lens and he would make it work, and sure enough he did.
For ground support equipment, I typically used the hex head screws.
Fasteners are an exciting topic. Well, maybe only exciting for engineers.
Why So Many Types of Screws?
Real Engineering (2019)
https://youtu.be/5cA9bZRHpZE
8:27