Thanks in advance
They are called “electric screwdrivers”.
There is one for $10 that uses alkaline batteries available at Target from Black&Decker, I don’t know quality.
In general, they are surprisingly noisy, too noisy for me to use mostly.
Yes, google “cordless screwdriver”.
Here’s one for example
Get one with adjustable torque so you don’t strip screw heads.
Thanks for all of the help guys!
I would stay clear of these. You really should be torquing the nut not the bolt.
~DK
An electric screwdriver with hex bit holder can use either a socket-bit to torque nuts, or an allen-hex-bit to torque the bolts.
What do you think the issue with torquing the bolt?
Does it matter if the nut is keps or castle?
In what conditions is the torque on the nut not equal to the torque on the bolt head?
I think he’s more referring to the potential to strip bolts.
If you hold the nut and turn the screw, or hold the screw and hold the net, isn’t the torque on the screw head the same? Or am I missing something?
Part of it is the risk of stripping the screw but there is also a different effect if you turn the bolt instead of the nut.
I should mention that I am currently working on one of these and when you work on these you tend to make sure that everything is torqued just right…
At high torque you are actually changing the shape of the threads of the bolt like it is a spring and from what I understand if you torque the bolt and hold the nut it just doesn’t hold as well and you run the risk of stripping the bolt. I tend to torque things on the car to 5 or 10 foot pounds more when it torque from the bolt side and from some test I did if I torque a bolt to 105 foot pounds and hold the nut and then set the torque wrench to 95 and step it up 1 pound at a time on the nut it works out that the the wrench stops clicking at about 100 foot pounds on the nut side…
I am not sure if the whole torque effect really matters so much in vex but the stripping the bolt risk is a big one.
~DK
Also, if you are using a bolt that doesn’t go all the way through the nut (because there is a bunch of metal there or something and you don’t want to fetch a longer bolt), there is a chance to strip the threads on the nut. Sometimes I’m tightening a bolt, and then the nut falls off with a little sliver of threading.
Having a different effect when turning the nut as opposed to the bolt probably has something to do with the friction on the side that you’re turning. No idea if this is true, but my other explanation involves magic.
For what it’s worth, the Exothermic teams played around with battery-powered screwdrivers a few years ago and then gave them up. The tight spaces around the typical VEX robot made them more trouble than they are worth. They use a lot of these screwdriver-style allen wrenches though.