inner pipe socket holder

This object was made in Tinkercad. Edit it online https://www.tinkercad.com/things/647Ro6cb3tz

Back more than 30 years ago there was a product called a "ready ratchet" which was a socket wrench that stored some sockets in its handle. You can't get them anymore. They've goon off the market for some reason. I've lost my metric one, and I loved it so much. I was inspired to decided to build my own take.

This is a very rough prototype (mostly because I don't want to break anyone's patent. I love those guys, whoever they are.)

The parts involved are:

• The world's cheapest 1/4" drive socket set (you don't think I'd brutalize a good set do you?)
• a random assortment of loose sockets I had laying around that were 5, 6, 7, 8, 10,12, and 13 mm
• 1" PVC water pipe
• 3/4" to 1" PVC adapter
• 1" PVC end cap
• 7 3mm X 1mm magnets
• 2 19.2mm X 2.5mm magnets (with countersink center hole)

Take the STL with a grain of salt. Sockets are widely varied in diameter and length, and one manufacture's 7mm will be no where near the same size as another's (ask me how I know.) But frankly you can Tinkercad yourself up this thing with a handful of your own sockets, and a digital caliper. The design is simply a stack of cylinders each somewhat larger than the actual sockets stacked up, and aligned by their centers. They are then grouped and turned into a hole, and aligned in the center of 22mm cylinder (22mm slides real nice into 1" PVC pipe). Then use a big rectangular box as a hole to slice it in half, when grouped. The finicky bits are making magnet pockets all over the place, but again, you're just adding cylinders the size of the magnets, and turning them into holes. It really is a fun project to fool around with. Expect refinements someday.

The ratchet head is hot glued into the 3/4" to 1" adapter, and this makes it "kind of removable" and surprisingly sturdy.

The big magnet on the end cap both helps remove the holder via it's magnet (get the polarities right!), and allows it to be clanked on something metal to help you not loose it. The same goes for the socket holder. I love neodymium magnets.

The little magnets help the sockets stay in place and not rattle around to much. You can tell they work, because that 10mm is always there when you go looking for it.

Now I know the first thing you'll say is "that will never hold up to any real work." and my response is neither will the cheap Chinese steel set I built it form... and also, you'd be surprised what it can do. I used my actual composite ready ratchet every day when I worked in the oil/gas field. I was a communications tech, and I installed radios in things. Data radios in well head controllers, and two-way voice radios in vehicles... This dumb thing was as much as I ever needed, and withstood the meager punishment I subjected it to. AND being plastic meant I was less likely to become part of any given circuit I was working on. Sure it's not VDE compliant, but It's also not a chunk of bare steel in my hand.

All I can say is "This was how I have fun, Have fun!"