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I have the same one and have used it for years, but the mechanism finally wore out after ratcheting once or twice it will skip (and not until its under a lot of load so you throw out your back)

In the past I've got them from mouser and newark. If I have months of time and want knockoffs for peanuts I order from aliexpress. There are a lot of odd OE connector copies on there.

those hip 2000 work great with the compound action. Min looks like that but I thought it had a different PN. pinches from the end or the side.

Probably some time after NAFTA came around? Wonder what the tariffs were like on hand tools prior to that.

I always try to break loose and do final torque with a straight bit or key. I mostly only use ball for driving home / removing fasteners (like when there is no load on the fastener).

That's true now, but before they.. harmonized, older DIN things (eg 80's cars and probably near current german/swiss industrial stuff?) used 17/19 over 16/18. Back then I always wondered why dad's no-skip wrench set had 16/18, as I'd never seen a matching fastener in my life.

Yeah, it goes back to competing metric standards. Germans basically never used 12mm, it's pretty rare. japan loved it, for example.

SBD has Proto for the 10% that want American tools.

I'd imagine one PB Swiss costs more than a whole set of cut down bondhus balldrivers (even if you had to pay someone to cut them!).

The new Proto (or at least some of them) are Wilde.

I can't really see that mattering, the way I see it the surge from the rest of the geartrain getting coupled to the motor is going to be a lot less than the initial inrush when the motor first turns on? I'd imagine that surge on the motor is less than that when you go from idling to taking a...

The last gray ratchet I got (little 32 or 40 tooth 1/4" guy) says "gray tools" instead of "gray canada". I'm pretty sure it's still made here, but why would you move the marketing in that direction. Also their website has so little maple leafs. A US site with US made tools (eg proto) has a US...

I don't know if there's anything like it in your area, but some places have electronics recycling facilities. (I think they mostly just box it up and ship it to the third world). If there's one around you it might be worth asking if they'll separate that sort of thing out for you.

I have a couple rulers, combination square, that are mitutoyo made in USA. Wonder if that means they just sourced them here. (or did they have a plant here for some things?)

I bought the wiha keys in 10 and 12 (i think). Haven't really had to used them yet but they look nice. Figure they'll be useful for some short access things - I changed the seats in my one car recently and the rails are held in with triple square with very little clearance. Ended up using the...

From what I can find: Guessing that's from the era when Textron owned them (XZN® sure reminds me of TORX®). B&S normally have more german names like inbus, verbus, etc.

My theory is, the first place I saw them show up on German cars in the 80's was on driveshafts (though CV joints). In that instance a stubby wont clear the joint, so they came with 2-3"+ long bits. After that I guess just inertia.

It would be kind of silly to be able to patent using a linkage invented in the 18th century, but they do grant patents for pretty zany stuff... it's some variation on this, anyway: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarrus_linkage No problems so far but it hasn't seen a ton of use, yet. It seems...

To be fair I consider teensy hex keys to be consumable too. Fortunately (?) I lose most of them before I break them. I don't really think the metallurgy is there to make a ball driver that tiny and make it life time. Though other companies would replace it?

I would guess stainless would be OK. Usually you run into problems when the two things are far different in reactivity (eg aluminium (very reactive) with steel (or stainless) [not so reactive]).