The New Design of Spanner

Abstract

In order to mitigate global warming, major countries in the world jointly agreed upon ”the Kyoto Protocol” in 1997, and these countries are inextricably involved in the trend of environmental protection, which involves enormous opportunities in itself. Since the Kyoto Protocol is for the control of CO2 emissions, which is the necessary result from using petrochemical fuel (petroleum, natural gas, coal), the enforcement of the protocol will surely impact the energy source allocation and industrial structure of the respective countries, and even affect the international competitiveness of the country's economy. Estimation of development potential in the tool industry in recent years deems that the cost of steel raw materials is to be climbing continuously; it is also seen that steel-reduction-design of daily hand tools such screwdrivers/ spanners will gain recognition when the global warming issue worsens day after day. Since the steel smelting process consumes coal or a large amount of electricity, both of which account for astonishing emission of greenhouse gases, directly causing a burden to planet earth, this paper therefore aims to make substantial contributions to reduce GHG emission by way of reduced-steel-design focusing on the development of spanner/screwdriver combination kits. Based on scientific and theoretical fundamentals, in addition to the development of the first generation combination kits, four improvements have been implemented addressing the defects of the first generation combination kits, they are respectively: Improved material hardness; Increase of socket-spanners; Incorporation of positioning function; and Elimination of the welding process, followed by the development of the second generation combination spanner kit. Furthermore, features of the second generation combination spanner kit include: increase of the design of the socket spanner system; the hollow-type socket is altered to be made of chromium molybdenum steel and chromium vanadium steel, increase of slide-positioning function in the hollow-type socket; and improvement of connecting method of Y-shaped spanners. After actual development and demonstration, the first generation combination spanner kit and the second generation combination spanner kit have gained New Model Patents in the Republic of China and won the silver medal in the 2002 International Invention Expo in Geneva, Swiss. The patented technology has been successfully transferred to listed companies, creating promising prospects.