Screwdriver expansion card

Am I being dumb or does this seem like a no-brainer? Who wants one?!

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why not go all the way and put a swiss army knife in an expansion card? (Do NOT take this to an airport!)

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I like it.
Might be too small though… It would have to fit in one of the drawers another member sells…

I mean, one Cheez-It cracker fits… That’s like one square inch… Pretty darn small…

Unless you are thinking of some sort of directly transforming from a bay to a screwdriver somehow…

If you make one, give details/post pics; I can’t imagine something of usable size…

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@Peter_Schofield I thought of including a small knife as well, but a well built swiss army toolkit would be out of scope for me to design. Maybe someone with better mechanical chops could do it.

@Ben_R I was thinking of it as a field screwdriver. Not a pleasure to use but serves in a pinch. That said, I think it could be fairly usable size. The idea was to transform the bay into a screwdriver as you surmize. Here’s a rough scetch of what I had in mind:

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Yes! A Cheez-It storage expansion card! Obviously also for emergency situations. :rofl:

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Building on the swiss army knife idea, an easy inclusion would be a bottle opener.

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You mean like the SNACK drawer?

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Fun fact: airports are extremely shit at finding knives.

I mean, yeah, don’t do it because you could get into trouble if you’re unlucky, but when you look into the stats for the TSA version of penetration testing you realise that… it’s all just security theatre. :stuck_out_tongue:

Me with a proper, professional Wiha screwdriver (blunt, Philips) along with a high-end multimeter and other tools, security measuring its length and saying it’s just barely acceptable.

Security at the next line looking at a guy’s wine bottle opener with him holding it in his fist between his fingers with the sharp part extending out between his fingers like brass knuckles: “that’s fine sir.”

:man_shrugging:

One possible idea is to have the magnetic bit accepter on a rail that could slide back and forth

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@Josh_Cook I had a very similar idea!

Just made this model that accepts two standard-size(4mm) bits, and has a holder to put the bits in. I know it’s all T5 bits, but I thought it’d be nice to be able to carry an eyeglasses screwdriver for example.


The model is printing now. So, we’ll know in 20 min or so if it works.

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I carry a TON of electronics tools with me wherever I go, and mostly I can charm my way through security. But this one time, as I was transiting through Turkey, the security flat out denied my entry into Turkey unless I dumped all my stuff, or got a visa, and went through the ‘proper’ check-in process. So I def feel the issues with TSA :sweat_smile:

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The 3d prints turned out to be too loose. I might have lost something in the metric-imperial conversion. Printing another one with tighter holes, but so far, it looks promising!

I could probably fit three or four bits if I played around with the position of the driver hole. LMK if that would be interesting.

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Holy fudge, you guys! NGL this is pretty legit. Now, if only I had a framework laptop, lol…

I’ve added the part on Thingiverse in case someone wants to print it. Would love to hear your thoughts.

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Next steps for the prototype would probably be a cushion under the bits so that they don’t rattle when you carry the laptop around.

Does anyone think I can get grant funding to provide this part to people? Just to cover manufacturing and shipping costs.

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That is awesome! One suggestion I have is putting the socket on the other end so we can have wheel-spikes on our laptops lol

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Love the way you think, @feesh! I’ve already updated the file on Thingiverse. Added an additional slot, because why not have a dual lightsaber?!

(You might have to do a hard refresh for the new file to show up. Thingiverse relies pretty heavily on cache)

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That’s pretty cool. I do wonder if we could combine it with the USB-C passthrough adapter to make a combined USB-C passthrough/screwdriver and not lose a port with that. Maybe just keep it to the two bits needed to open up the computer if space is an issue.

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Might try printing it.

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@Minty_Root that sounds like a great idea! I’m pretty sure it should be possible to make something with one bit, not sure if two bits are possible. It might work if I use the side rail as part of the holder.

Either way, it’ll likely involve a custom USB C male to female ribbon cable/PCB. Unless something like this already exists(I haven’t done enough research, but the few searches I did came up with too fat a USB connector)

@Josh_Cook Would love to hear your thoughts and see photos if you do!

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I have been thinking of this for so long but my idea is store the tip of screw driver on aux/3.5mm port since I will never use it anyway. My idea might be in practical though.

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