Whether you’re off to the local Hackerspace, or headed to a friend’s house to lend a hand with the latest project it’s nice to have your favorite tools in a handy package. [Mário Saleiro] decided to take the concept one step further than a toolbox by making his own zipper wallet with cutouts for his favorite tools.
The enclosure is a CD wallet, but who carries those plastic discs around with them anymore? After removing the CD sleeves [Mário] positioned his tools — in this case a pen, angle cutters, and pliers — on one side of the case to make a template. The tracings were then used to cut out pieces from an exercise carpet (we think this is like a rubber yoga mat). The square was glued to the side of the wallet, and some elastic band was sewn in to hold them in place. On the other side is a small components bin, and a little box to hold a tiny multimeter.
[Thanks Nuno]
looks useless for me, those are steel tools, they won’t break if you put them into backpack or toolbox.
No, but your bag might. Or whatever else you want to have in your bag at the same time.
The pen is actually a precision screwdriver set! The 9 bits are stored inside the pen :)
I wonder how you can be happy with $1 chinese pliers?
One thing i have learned in decades is that you can not put the right tools in such a “emergency bag”. What you need is never in there.
So for the last ten years i have been lobbing my 30 pound tool case around. And still the thing i need is sometimes not in there.
But that happens not very often.
I’v found you can’t even carry everything you need on something as small as a truck. You really need to carry around something about the size of a Home Depot.
Well if my pickup had a CD player I would carry those plastic disks, but it only has the factory cassette player; oh well.
Anyway a beginner or non-beginner can drool all they want on a Jensen Tools catalog lusting for one of those tool kits, but that isn’t going to get them one. This can get people thinking how they will go about making a kit to suit them. In general I’m not a fan of fitted tool cases, but they do let you know at a glance if something missing as you close up the case. Understanding choosing the size is a compromise,I’d go for one the size of spiral bound note book. Often at the beginning of the school year on can find zippered three ring binders on sale. Myself I picked up a nice tool case at the estate auction of a man who owned a small town TV shop.
You can often find excellent small carrying cases at military surplus stores, but I’ve had amazing and excellent luck with re-purposed bags purchased from thrift shops and garage sales.
I spent a LOT of money buying expensive flight bags, none of which worked out. Too many zippers, pockets not quite right, lame materials.
Tried back packs, commercially made “for pilots” bags, military stuff and even a bowling bag. It’s a real goldilocks problem, as nothing was ever just right.
The winner by a long shot was a not-terribly flamboyant women’s makeup case made of ballistic nylon (by a famous new york designer whose initials are the same as a famous drumstick vendor, minus the F.) in blue.
It was better than anything I’d ever tried – the headsets, log books, sunglasses and so on fit perfectly. It was lined with plastic/rubber/something that let me keep snacks and gum in it for months at a time. Cash stays in the little tampon pocket, and it has amazingly heavy duty zippers. It’s compact and rugged.
Must haves for pilots:
The new Folding Ray-bans ($$) are freakin’ great, I just wish there were cheaper alternatives. The case has a magnetic clasp, so be forewarned.
A pack of handiwipes to get fuel, oil and vomit off your hands, and to clean your underwear with after death decides to high five you for kicks as you suddenly realize that those clouds all around you are lenticular from up close.
A large cloth ski cap to act as a headset bag/cover, because cold sucks.
Now that anything serious has USB and USB memory keys are so cheap, you can use a small shaving kit as a tool bag and load up with everything. It will usually fit in a jacket pocket without a single problem.
Is it a slow day at hackaday? This is hardly “one step further than a toolbox”. A toolbox (or even a backpack) is something you can actually fit tools in, this toolset seems so limited to be rather pointless. It couldnt really be used to even install a hard drive because the screwdriver is too small. I mean wire cutters and a multimeter, but no wire/solder/iron? I want to know what repairs (let alone a creation) could be done with it.
And jesus christ, he spent 20 euros on it! You can get this belkin toolkit with a ton of tools for about the same price, $28 USD.
http://www.google.com/products/catalog?q=computer+tool+kit+case&hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&hs=7lX&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&prmd=imvns&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&biw=878&bih=918&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=shop&cid=16595762004015871887&sa=X&ei=oDDET8OoMcHRsgKww-XYCQ&ved=0CIUBEPMCMAE#scoring=p
Thanks I was waiting for someone else to post this. No offense to the builder, but these kits have been around for a long while. I have a Fellowes kit my friend gave me that I just slipped my own tools into. I did keep the little “claw” screw extractor.
I would like to add this idea so this is not a destructive post: Velcro!
Coat the inside of the case with the soft side of strips or panels and use the rough strips to hold the tools in place. Works for any size or shape of tool and is adjustable and let’s face it: elastic does not always hold a stitch for a long time ;)
It’s a purse.
it’s not a purse, it’s a satchel. indiana jones wears one
The tool pack obviously was not intended for complex works that require lots of tools. For that you would need a truck and you would still be missing some tools. It was made considering the needs of begineer electronics students or hobbyists, who can get away on simple jobs using only a few cheap tools. For some breadboarding prototyping it’s just enough. Such tool kit can easily be placed inside a back pack and taken to the lab lectures.
How bout the leatherman you should already own and a cheap radio shack multimeter? You can even include a torch style lighter and a heavy paperclip for quick and improvised soldering tasks…
I often deal with relatively low speed serial buses at work, and I don’t like many of the tools my employer keeps on hand. So I always bring an old point-n-shoot camera bag loaded with my favorite open source embedded tools: Bus Pirate, Bus Blaster, an FT232RL breakout board, and an Open Logic Sniffer, along with a couple retractable mini-USB cables and miscellaneous jumpers and test clips.
The whole setup takes up as much space in my laptop bag as a travel mouse.
I wanted to build a small electronics travel tool kit but wanted to go even smaller. The Problem I ran into was the all the multimeters I found were way too big or had too many features removed.
All these tools and more can be found at Jensen tool kits for IT’s.