[Closed] Impressively simple engineering - can you guess what it does?

Some kind of shelving or racking component?

Looks like its designed to hold flexible sheets maybe? Push them past those two wedges and theyll expand out and not come back out?

I'll give you some dimensions - made from 50mm box section steel - about half a meter wide.

and used in pairs

Is it to carry pipework/ducts/cabling on flat roofs?

this is a portable item

some kind of scaffolding plank safety thing

or ladder retainer?

Ladder stand off?

A STW bottle opener?

Unless you are the right type of chartered engineer I can't tell you it's proper name, but the lay term is thingamajig.

Well i wondered if it was for wedging 2 scaffold planks in to make a stand for something but the gap in the wedges looks like 50mm and a plank is 1.5" so not that. Is it for storing 4x2s off the ground?

Is it a dead one of these?

 the gap in the wedges looks like 50mm

Close - without measuring I'd say a smidge less than 49mm

This is boring now. Answer please.

Well I'm guessing it's reusable due to the wear, and it looks like there's separate marks on the horizontal box section, so to hold multiple 'things'...

Is it a thing for holding 10 or so bits of 2x2 wood so you can cut them all at the same time?

Is it like, the foot of a really minimal and brutal bed for self-flagellating monk-types?

Is it a dead one of these?

Nice. I'd forgotten that joke entirely.

I give up, even cheating with Google reverse image search or Google lens gives no correct matches, so it can't be that useful...

Does the OP even know what it does?

Keyboard and monitor mount. Obvs.

Does the OP even know what it does?

Ahh, very cunning. Found a pair of these in his garage and can't work out what the hell they're for, but doesn't want to admit it...

Does the OP even know what it does?

I sure do. I had to move some stuff for our rigger today

So....

Take two 'thingamajigs' (secrets safe with me MSP don't worry)  and stand them an arbitrary distance apart, parallel to one another

and its not scaffold boards, its scaffold tubes. Place one across the two stillages ( ****, sorry MSP) and it'll roll under the wedge bit on one side and wedges itself  there locking both peices square and upright. Then - just keep adding tubes, once there are 10 across the bottom the two outer ones are both snugged under those wedges. Then add as many as you like - the ones you add press down on the bottom row and keep the outer ones locked under the wedges and the whole thing stays stable - the weight of the tubes makes it more and more consolidated the more you add

So far so cool - all your tubes are nicely stacked - but wait - we need to move them.

The smart thing is, with out any fixings or straps- when you come to move them the weight of the tubes keeps everything locked together - so when you pick the tubes up with a forklift, the tubes pick up the stillage. Totally genius.

Compared to traditional stillages they are more stable,  take up a fraction of the space, weigh less and are about a tenth of the price. Dead clever - and they are the first thing I've seen our rigger smile about in weeks!. 🙂

Some traditional stillages being ugly and inelegant and getting in the way when they're empty.

Nice.
Thanks for highlighting the mis-use of “over-engineered” too - boils my piss when I read/hear it!

I was going to say that was incredibly disappointing but I'd worked out that it was going to be some time ago.

We need an emoji for a massive anti-climax....

I like that lots.

Wasn’t far off I was going to say stacking tree trunks

We need an emoji for a massive anti-climax….

🦆

That is a pretty cool thing tbh. Simple, elegant and takes up little space. Guarantee one will go missing on 99% of sites and **** the entire idea up.

a massive anti-climax….

The massive anti-climax cost millions of pounds, takes dozens of boffins to operate and months and months of their time (which by now will have run into £millions too) and has failed the deliver almost everything it was supposed to -  and and is just behind that roller shutter on the left of the picture. 🙂

The massive anti-climax cost millions of pounds, takes dozens of boffins to operate and months and months of their time (which by now will have run into £millions too) and has failed the deliver almost everything it was supposed to

Is it Boris Johnson?

The massive anti-climax cost millions of pounds, takes dozens of boffins to operate and months and months of their time (which by now will have run into £millions too) and has failed the deliver almost everything it was supposed to – and and is just behind that roller shutter on the left of the picture. 🙂

Now you have piqued my interest…. What’s behind the roller shutter ?

That's cool, I also know you don't work for Cape or Altrad or whatever they're called now.

Worth it for the duck!

The stillages at the place hell hole I used top work had removable uprights.... Anyway...Guess there's a balance between specificity and storability.

Quack!

Interesting, I found two of those in the yard at work, I didn't know what they were but I took them home and we used then as legs for a garden bench.

Those are beautifully elegant in their simplicity, almost Bauhaus in a form follows function sort of thing. That sort of thing appeals to me very much.

@Simon - I’ll bet there’s stacks of scaffolding tubes scattered around with all sorts of things acting as jury-rigged wedges in your yard… 🤣

ah, they looked sort of familiar but it looked smaller in the photo.  Indeed a very elegant design

Now you have piqued my interest…. What’s behind the roller shutter ?

A non disclosure agreement and an air of disappointment 🙂

almost Bauhaus in a form follows function sort of thing

What I like about it is it could just as easily be medieval, pretty much, in the same sense something like a traditional bench dog / hold fast creates a versatile, powerful clamp and its just one piece of bent metal

I can see a couple of design flaws making them less idiot proof than the traditional stillage, and potentially dangerous. A neat solution but I won't be buying any.

I can see a couple of design flaws making them less idiot proof than the traditional stillage, and potentially dangerous. A neat solution but I won’t be buying any.

Aye, if you hit a bump in your sideloader and a tube bounced that could get messy very quickly. Traditional stillages can take boards as well or be fitted as boxes for clips, probably harder to stack those as well.

It's probably a great solution for a warehouse but on site not so much.

*not a scaffolder

So it's not a set of jumps for a Shetland Pony then? Damn...

Is Bloodhound behind the shutter?

These kinds of things show that development doesn't always have to be high tech. Sometimes, human ingenuity being what it is, someone just has a good simple idea that hasn't been had before.

Yes
Not that long ago there were no tethers on petrol caps and window cleaners used long ladders.