Background:
Mechanical engineer working in manufacturing/assembly for drilling industry.
We are assembling a large quantity of pipe sections together in order to create a completed piece of drilling equipment. The material is 4140 steel and the sections vary in length and diameter sections vary as well about 2.25" to 3". The section are held in a pipe vise, anti-seize is applied and then the segments get threaded together by hand with a final torque being applied by specialized hydraulic torque benches and wrenches.
Where I need ideas:
The problem is threading together a large number of pipe segments by hand creates a large amount of wrist strain and is also very slow.
I need to increase the throughput of threading together segments and reduce wrist strain.
Current Ideas:
Naturally i look to an electric cordless drill for rotary motion in threading, but the trouble lies in interfacing with the pipe segments and the drill.
The only thing I can come up with is a oil filter wrench with some sort of conforming rubber inside that would adapt to different segment diameters. But this wouldn't cover a very large range of diameter and I'm not sure the friction between the rubber and the pipe would be able to create enough torque to thread the pipe together and instead just end up slipping on the pipe. I also came across auto-adjustable "spider style oil wrenches" that are supposed to conform to different sizes of oil filters, but they only work in one direction and again I'm not sure they wouldn't just slip.
https://cdn.mscdirect.com/global/images/ProductImages/7794801-21.jpg
Most oil filter wrenches have hexagonal features designed to key on the oil filter for applying torque otherwise you need a belt wrench to grip the cylinder of the oil filter.
Anyways don't let my brainstorming direct your brainstorming. Please post whatever ideas or preferably off-the-shelf solutions you have
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