Wouldn't an impact wrench have been a more appropriate tool in that case?

Yes it would, but I didn't have one available at the time.

Or a regular wrench + a good number of firm taps with a hammer?

Tried that before breaking out the jack.

An 18" lever and floor jack sounds like a good recipe to break off a frozen bolt.

Yeah, it is a lot of times. After the first attempt, I let it sit for a couple of days with penetrating oil on it, and I had the drill ready to go if things went south. I was frankly surprised that the bolt *didn't* break, and even more surprised that the threads were perfectly clean, with just a little bit of blue Loctite on them.

Those parts are bigger than the output. The highest force is applied to the output, not the ratcheting mechanism, because the output is of lesser diameter.

That's assuming that the fastener is the smallest element in the system, and things get worse very quickly when the fastener is substantially bigger than the drive. In my particular case, it was a 1/2" drive on an 18mm socket, and it was the drive that broke. The size of the ratchet head was about an inch, so I'm guessing the ratchet itself was also around 18mm. Ratchet survived, but was kinda useless without the drive, and it wasn't worth it to open the wrench up and replace it. :-)

Having said that, I hadn't thought about grossly oversized ratchets/drives in conjunction with small fasteners. If you're turning a 1/2" bolt using a Hulk-like plastic ratchet with a 1" drive, you will have a lot more mechanical advantage to work with.

If a finer part of the tool survived but a thicker broke, doesn't it seem very plausible that the tool was either badly designed or that the manufacturer have problems in their molding process.

I guarantee that was the case (although steel hand tools are generally forged, not molded) - it's not like I was using a high-end Snap-On wrench. Just the same, the crappiest steel tool is going to be stronger than any ABS tool of comparable dimensions.

You are talking about managing to break a hand powered tool. With a good design that have been correctly manufactured that shouldn't be possible. Plastic or steel, it is perfectly possible to create ratchets strong enough that your arm will break before the tool.

I also mentioned that the bolt was tight enough to require a floor jack to get enough torque on it, so it was under far more torque than any person could apply. That *still* should not have been adequate to break the drive, but it did. It's possible to make very strong ratchets with a variety of plastics in a size readily usable as a hand tool, but neither ABS nor PLA is one of them

3d printers are working in metals now. Carbon fiber as well.

The one in question doesn't, so this statement is irrelevant to the discussion.

I don't know how to deal with someone with so little vision that they can't understand the value of fabricating tools on site when the alternative costs thousands of dollars a pound and has turn-around measured in months.

Spend as much time as I have in tool manufacturing facilities and working with engineers to optimize production processes (including 3D sintering, which already was old news 10 years ago), and then once you've done that, go back and read the original post and explain where "little vision" comes from. I said nothing regarding 3D prototyping/manufacturing in general, but you'd know that if you actually read what I wrote.

" So I'd ask you to just stay away from the Internet."

Says the AC. Whatever, dude.

Absolutely, assuming you have the room to turn it and can otherwise get the wrench onto the fastener.

Yes, on space stations.

It certainly doesn't sound like it when you jump to the conclusion that the largest and sturdiest part of a tool would fail before the fine tool end that contacts the nut.

I'm not an M.E., but I've seen enough drives/ratchets break with intact sockets (and no, they weren't impact sockets) to know that one can't make that statement categorically.

so the force increases as you get closer to the nut/screw.

You're absolutely right, which means the *ratchet and drive* are under the highest stress.

It's not a contrived (that means "unlikely and made up for the purposes of the argument", BTW) example - it actually did happen, and happens more often than you might think. Just because a good portion of the ISS was built under ideal conditions doesn't mean that fasteners can't stick. There are parts that have been in space for more than 15 years, after all.

But to respond to your statement directly, no, a metal socket isn't going to help the first bit when the drive, ratchet, or handle is made of a flimsy plastic like ABS or PLA, even if it's injection molded. If the fastener is hard enough to turn that it breaks an ABS socket, then it's going to break the wrench instead when you use a steel socket on it.

If you attach a metal socket, it's probably quite capable.

I wouldn't expect a lot. I snapped the solid steel drive on a 1/2" ratchet right off the last time I did my brakes trying to get a frozen caliper bolt out . It took an 18" breaker bar with a 3/4" drive in combination with a floor jack to get enough torque on the breaker bar to finally get the bolt loose. I don't foresee an ABS tool handling that kind of stress.

Not even that, Visual C++ .NET is a broken aberration that I have not seen used anywhere ever

C++/CLI gets used plenty, but mostly in places where straight C++ has to interact with other managed code. It works, but C# is a *lot* easier to deal with if you're staying completely within the managed environment. If you don't have the need to mix them, you likely won't see it. In my case, I've had to use it both at my current job and the one previous when integrating legacy C++ code with newer .Net stuff.

Posted as AC because I don't feel like putting up with all the haters and doubters who will shitpost because they hate me for reminding them how much they're lacking, and the jerks who will call me a liar.

On the contrary, it's a good reminder that our bodies are really remarkable machines, and can often come back effectively from a lifetime of abuse if you make effort to do it.

A friend and I had some fun at the Jehovah's Witnesses' expense about 30 years ago. I was over at his place, and there was a knock at the door. He peeked outside and said "Dude, it's the Jehovah's Witnesses, come here!" He threw his arm around me and answered the door in a very lispy voice, and they were mostly speechless. He then looked at me and said, "Well hun, I don't guess they have anything to say, so let's go back to bed!" and shut the door on them. He never got another knock again.

What would it take to create a probe that could survive these conditions and send back data indefinitely? Is it even currently possible to engineer electronics that can either operate at those temperatures or be insulated and cooled sustainably? If you had infinite funding and the best engineers in the world, how would you even begin to address this?

Same here. Still have a bookshelf full of old Byte rags.