Screwed?  Don't come unglued by Paul V. Arnold You lean and stretch, contort your body, trying to get a screw started in that hard-to-reach area.  Then you hear the sound.  Ping, ping, ping. You dropped the screw or it fell off (or was knocked off) the tip of your screwdriver.  The screw bounces around inside the machine and hits the floor.  Or it lodges itself somewhere inside the machine. Then your co-workers hear the sound.  Aaarrgh! Jim Gross has been in that situation, and developed a solution. Gross, a mechanical engineer at Cerro Metal Products in Bellefonte, Pa., temporarily attaches the screw to the screwdriver tip with a drop of cyanoacrylate glue (i.e. Krazy Glue or Superglue). The bond allows him to place the screw.  Then, a slight tug or shaking motion on the screwdriver dislodges it from the screw. Most times, says Gross, the glue sticks to the screwdriver and not the screw.   Scratched off any excess or remove it with acetone.  Acetone also works when you've accidentally Krazy Glued your fingers together. "I started using this particular idea three years ago, but I've used cyanos for more than a decade," he says.  "I used to work in the microelectronics industry, and we used that stuff for everything.  Every time you turned around, someone needed to hold something in place temporarily." This article appeared in the April/May 1999 issue of MRO Today magazine.  Copyright, 1999. Back to top Back to Ideas that make sense archives