Wingnut

One day at work, my boss jokingly declared his hatred for wingnuts (he thought thumb screws were superior in every way). I decided that weekend to create a “gift” for him, both for fun and to practice form sculpting in Fusion 360. Using a standard two-pronged wingnut from McMaster as a reference, I created what I believed to be the most unconventional wingnut and screw in existence. I made the wingnut have three prongs, gave the screw a seven-sided heptagonal head, and modeled a nice ISO-compliant M23×2.75 thread between them. To top it off, I then used Bambu Studio’s color painting tool to print the wingnut with a camouflaged pattern.

Surprisingly, my boss received the “gift” well and promptly added it to his collection of strange objects. It later gained unofficial status as a workplace trophy, where any engineer who proposed a brilliant idea or caught a critical mistake would promptly have the wingnut placed on their desk.

Some time later, I had JLCPCB 3D print and polish an optically transparent copy of the wingnut for me. This, too, would end up in my boss’s growing collection of strange objects.