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Conduit Locknut Bit
Occasionally my dad will ask me to design him something. This was an idea he had for a tool to tighten the locknut on an electrical box conduit fitting. If the boxes are located in a hard to reach area, it can be difficult to tighten the locknut with your fingers, so this tool would provide a way to use a driver or ratchet to tighten the nut.
My employer at the time, Sigma Design, had recently purchased an HP Multi Jet Fusion 3D printer, which uses a nylon powder to create parts almost as strong as if they were injection molded, so I decided to prototype my design on that machine.
Below is a screenshot of the final design.
The prongs on the end grip the locknut, and the opening on the side is in case you already have wires coming out of the fitting that need to pass through. I decided to buy a steel 1/4" nut driver and glue that into the end of the tool so it could be attached to a driver. I didn't want this part to be plastic because it would have easily snapped once in use. The image below shows the finished prototype with the nut driver.
The image below is another shot of the prototype, this time with a locknut on the end.
In order to hold the locknut in place, there are three magnets in the tool. The image below shows one of the three holes where a cylinder magnet was glued in place.
The image below shows the tool as it would be used to attach a nut to the fitting on an electrical box.
The file below can be used to make this part.
Page created: 2018