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Every project I work on that includes fasteners seems to end up accumulating a pile of unsorted, random bolts and their buddies. Usually these piles just find their way into what will be their indefinite home...the bolt bucket. So I've long thought it would be amazing to have a contraption to handle this for me, and over the years have tried a few, shall we say, 'not so fruitful' attempts to rig something up. The last couple of months I've been playing around with trying to build something 'sieve-like' for sorting bolts by their heads. If you aren't familiar with sieves, here's an article from some random website that came up in the first few Google results ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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There's nothing too special in how it works, each layer has an array of holes. The holes of that layer are just smaller than the diameter of the head of the fastener that you want to 'capture' in that layer. The below cross-section shows the hole sizes for this 'first gen' set of screens. I selected these values based on the BHCS and SHCS head sizes ('dk' value) on the tables here.
Obviously this doesn't solve all of my sorting woes, but as you can see from the little video (is there anything worse than having to listen to your own voice?? :) ) it works pretty damn well for at least tackling this specific piece of the problem!
I printed mine from White and Clear Overture PETG, with all five parts printing on a single build plate in a little under 7 hours.
I plan to add additional screens over time, and, while I really like this little dude and have already tossed one in each of my toolboxes, I still have hopes for something that can handle the full range of crap that bolt bucket has to offer! If you have ideas for how to make that dream happen, want to suggest screen sizes that you think would be must-haves, or just want to follow along to see how it evolves, you can follow me on Printables.
Screens
BHCS & SHCS - Metric
M2 - 3.6mm pores
M2.5 - 4.3mm pores
M3 - 5.3mm pores
M6 - 9.7mm pores
I printed the one shown in Green Overture PETG with a 0.6mm E3D Revo nozzle.
Spacers
The spacers are intended to add some extra volume to a given 'chamber' of the sieve to allow for longer fasteners, or slightly more fasteners (ultimately going to be limited by the number of 'pores' per screen, of course.)
"Unit Cell" Spacer - 27mm
This spacer is the same height as the other (current) screens at 27mm from flat to flat.
I printed the one shown in Red Overture PETG with a 0.6mm E3D Revo nozzle.
Other
No6 - "Bugle" Head...? New to me, but that's what the box says ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I think this should work for most #6 wood screw heads, but I sized it specifically based on some wood screws I have around that I wanted to sort out.
I printed the one shown in Green Overture PETG with a 0.6mm E3D Revo nozzle.