Giant tweezers - photo

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Jul 20, 2020, 03:42 PM
Altair

Giant tweezers - photo

Giant tweezers.

https://diqn32j8nouaz.cloudfront.net/giant_tweezers.jpg

Previously:

https://www.homemadetools.net/forum/...462#post131847
https://www.homemadetools.net/forum/...521#post151309
https://www.homemadetools.net/forum/...188#post145742
https://www.homemadetools.net/forum/...111#post130189
https://www.homemadetools.net/forum/...500#post154952
Jul 21, 2020, 06:22 PM
Karl_H

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.
Jul 21, 2020, 09:23 PM
Frank S

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.
Jul 22, 2020, 12:57 AM
Drew1966

I’d hate to have a splinter in me that was big enough to need them.
Dec 3, 2020, 01:42 PM
Jon

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

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</video>
Dec 3, 2020, 05:50 PM
jdurand

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.
Dec 3, 2020, 08:10 PM
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.
Dec 3, 2020, 09:26 PM
Frank S

So why is 1 guy using tweezers while the other guy just picks up the shard they are both wearing gloves
Dec 3, 2020, 10:50 PM
nova_robotics

Quote:

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.
Dec 4, 2020, 05:47 PM
jdurand

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

https://youtu.be/LZpyeS6sRac
Dec 4, 2020, 06:20 PM
nova_robotics

Quote:

Originally Posted by jdurand

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

Ooohhh. That's a nice unit. Looks light years beyond the stainless steel vibrating trough that was sorting salt crystals years ago.
Dec 5, 2020, 08:12 PM
fool injector

Those giant tweezers are sometimes called aquarium tongs. Very useful tools for stuff you can't quite reach or stuff you wouldn't want to touch if you could reach it. Sold by Micro-Mark and not very expensive.
Dec 13, 2020, 09:19 PM
Toolmaker51

Maybe they could market vote-counting equipment for 2024.......
Dec 14, 2020, 05:16 PM
CharlesWaugh

I chatted with an engineer one time who had built a wheat kernel sorting machine.
The wheat was sorted as it was loaded onto barges - so there was a LOT of wheat to sort one kernel at a time!

They used a color-discriminating electric eye thingy, and for the air jets they simply bolted steel plates on the front of loudspeakers with a tube leading from the plate to the sorting machine.
Transducers (coil-in-a-magnetic gap) are very fast and very controllable for air volume. And they are good for lots of cycles over their lifetime.

He said there were hundreds of lines running one kernel at time through the sorter.
Dec 14, 2020, 07:08 PM
Toolmaker51

Not just beans; baked goods are sorted for size, shape, weight and color in similar fashion. Some include X-ray to screen impurities like metal chips, zip ties. Figuratively, all packaged food is inspected in one or combined techniques. Being presorted as Mr. Waugh describes makes subsequent checks even more effective.
Dec 15, 2020, 01:52 AM
Tooler2

Quote:

Originally Posted by jdurand

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

impressive machine but I was dying to see the reject bin poured through for another go at selecting the desired colour!