On Tuesday, February 18, 2014 11:26:06 PM UTC-5, Mike Marlow wrote:
dpb wrote:

On 2/18/2014 7:00 PM, Leon wrote:

...



I don't know, I can hold the impact with a large enough socket, with

my bare hand, with a little slippage.



Because impact wrenches don't actually deliver torque, per se, but an

energy impulse. Somewhat paradoxically, against a "springy"

resistance like your hand, there is very little, if any actual torque

delivered as opposed to it working against a stuck fastener.



There's a decent albeit not fully rigorous discussion at wikipedia

under a heading "Effect of Impact Drive"...in short to transfer the

hammer action to the driven part requires an essentially elastic (the

cue ball on the object ball thingie) impact whereas your hand hold is

very non-elastic.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_wrench



Boy - this group can dive down into esoteric rabbit holes! Why doesn't

someone just try it rather than deliberating all of the theoretical

I-don't-really-know stuff?



--



-Mike-



It's physics. All of which can be extremely modeled with math w/o lifting a finger.