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We have been doing some cleaning up out in the electronics production area and found the "mystery tool" shown in the two images below. It is made from stainless steel. The blue insulation is dipped and the black insulation is heatshrink tubing. I estimate that it's around 10 years old, but that's just an educated guess. For reference, the quarter is about 1"/25mm in diameter. Does anyone recognize this tool?

enter image description here

crj11
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    Might be for the hold down mechanism on some sort of heatsink clamp? It sort of looks like someone said "oh we could take the idea of an old DIP IC extractor and modify it to do that" where "that" is interact with unique features of some sort of mechanical latch that probably involved a bar spanning something and captured by spring latches at one or both ends. Consider past products assembled and what sort of sockets components or modules they contained. – Chris Stratton Aug 20 '20 at 14:46
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    Looks like its meant to be used on something live. – DKNguyen Aug 20 '20 at 14:56
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    Heatsink clamp for chips – Tony Stewart EE75 Aug 20 '20 at 14:59
  • Purposes of these tools depends on how old are they? and what kind of products was intended for production? What was the available technology at that age? Is it going back to acient time? I can search in our ministry of historic monuments documentaries if needed. Just give me the green light – ahm_zahran Aug 20 '20 at 15:12
  • @Ahmed M.Zahran , It's unlikely that the tool is more than 20 years old. Probably more like 10. – crj11 Aug 20 '20 at 15:16
  • I don't know what kind of product it was used for, but I would bet that it is an anti-sprong device. It is for the kind of assembly that goes sprong if you try to assemble or disassemble it with anything but the correct tool. When it goes sprong, parts fly in all directions and a) one or more parts are lost, b) you are not sure if any parts are lost,) and/or c) you are not quite sure how to put it back together. They are sold only professional service technicians who will be happy to install a new kit with all the parts for only 1.X times the cost of a new product. –  Aug 20 '20 at 16:19
  • @crj11 Going from the picture, it looks like I see grinder marks. At least one one side, anyway. So these look to me to be custom fabricated by modifying some other tool they started out with. – jonk Aug 20 '20 at 17:06
  • @DKNguyen with that gap in the insulation? I reckon the original PVC is just for grip and someone want to grip it lower down. I've often used heatshrink for that – Chris H Aug 21 '20 at 08:44
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    @ChrisH I see. Whenever I've used tools like that I've never needed to grip so low. I hold it around the middle. I figured the gap was just because it was for low-voltage use where shock wasn't an issue but shorting was. – DKNguyen Aug 21 '20 at 13:15

1 Answers1

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It is a Pace brand tip remover tool.

It is used to grab the hot soldering iron tip and swap it out with another one.

The black rubber is not heat-shrink... it's something that will withstand the temperature of the soldering iron tip, perhaps silicone.

If you look closely, there is also a straight-edge screwdriver at the end. This is for loosening the tip lockscrew.

Attached is a small image of a typical Pace set-up.enter image description here

rdtsc
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