Giant tweezers - photo

**Altair** · Jul 20, 2020, 03:42 PM

Giant tweezers.

Previously:

Enormous torque wrench - photo
Massive Armstrong wrench - photo
World's largest impact wrench - photo and videos
Enormous concrete saw - GIF
Extra long rebar socket wrench - photo

**Karl_H** · Jul 21, 2020, 06:22 PM

Is this a novelty tool, or is there a real use for them?

(Never mind. I looked it up myself!)
$12-15 bucks - marketed (on the site I saw) for feeding reptiles and snakes in aquariums.

**Frank S** · Jul 21, 2020, 09:23 PM

I'm pretty sure my grandmother must have had a pair of those that she used on me when I landed butt first in a large prickly pear cactus after falling out of a pear tree.

**Drew1966** · Jul 22, 2020, 12:57 AM

I’d hate to have a splinter in me that was big enough to need them.

**Jon** · Dec 3, 2020, 01:42 PM

Not as giant as the tweezers in the first post, but the largest I could find. Sorting recycling?

**jdurand** · Dec 3, 2020, 05:50 PM

those are pretty handy, we have a pair. Also extra long surgical clamps. Not sure what they're for clamping, long enough to go all the way through you.

**Elizabeth Greene** · Dec 3, 2020, 08:10 PM

They are picking out the non-clear glass.

I could build them a machine to do this automatically with air jets and machine vision. It probably wouldn't be as cheap as people though.

**Frank S** · Dec 3, 2020, 09:26 PM

So why is 1 guy using tweezers while the other guy just picks up the shard they are both wearing gloves

**nova_robotics** · Dec 3, 2020, 10:50 PM

Originally Posted by Elizabeth Greene

They are picking out the non-clear glass.

I could build them a machine to do this automatically with air jets and machine vision. It probably wouldn't be as cheap as people though.

Depends where the workers are employed. I'm up here in Canuckistan and that machine would pay for itself pretty quick. I saw a lightning fast air jet system for sorting salt crystals about 10 years ago that realistically probably only cost 2x the annual wage of a person (in Canada). Ancient vision system of some sort, probably just discrete optical sensors, and a whole bunch of air solenoids to eject the pieces of salt that didn't have the appearance they wanted. So if these guys are sorting glass somewhere in North America it might be economical.

These days you probably wouldn't want to use something like that dirty old salt sorter than I saw. Tensorflow is a wonderful thing.

**jdurand** · Dec 4, 2020, 05:47 PM

Here we went from pre-sorted recycling to "dump it all in one bid". I can't imagine how they sort the broken glass and wet paper and other stuff that will inevitably wind up in the stream. My guess is they only grab the bigger visible stuff and everything else goes to landfill.

Here's a bean sorting machine that uses the air jets