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Home Forums Tools of the Trade Milwaukee One-Key Tool Tick trackers – 4 pack for just $14

  • nafets47

    Member
    April 7, 2021 at 5:05 pm

    Are you able to post a picture of relative size compared to another tool? I was always curious how big these are.

  • techtownmayor

    Member
    April 7, 2021 at 7:42 pm

    Here is a photo of one of the tags. Bigger than a tile tracker, and definitely too big for your average multimeter, but well sized for a tool bag or manifold.

    tick
  • fixbear

    Member
    April 7, 2021 at 8:14 pm

    The big thing I always lost was thermometers that I had placed in a customers cooler. Go to the compressor room and come back and find them gone. Hated that. And it often was just one customer that had assessed the cooler. I lost dozens that way.

    • techtownmayor

      Member
      April 7, 2021 at 9:10 pm

      Sticky fingers are expensive 🙁

      No matter what you do, stuff tends to walk away. I used to take a soldering iron to some tools and mark them in a way I had assumed would make them unattractive to people, but even that didn’t work…

  • nafets47

    Member
    April 8, 2021 at 5:14 pm

    Wow. That is pretty large. Would have been cool if it was smaller, I’m thinking 10th the size that could just be stuck to the back of tools.

    My father who is a GC sprayed all of his tools and batteries (he uses Dewault) orange. My buddy does the same with his Makita except white. Both of them noticed a huge difference in tools walking away permanently. At least they could come up to whoever had the sticky fingers on the site and take it back….. always an accident of course.

  • nafets47

    Member
    April 13, 2021 at 12:00 pm

    A friend of mine was working out how to use RF labels to verify that items in rooms at a hotel were still there. I wonder if that concept could be used for tool tracking?

    Since they are significantly smaller they could be tucked inside the shell of tools.

    • techtownmayor

      Member
      April 13, 2021 at 12:44 pm

      I’ve played around with quite a few RF tag systems and usually concluded that it would not work for anything I wanted. The range is too short, and you need too many readers to make it viable. I know that hotels could really benefit from loss prevention like this!

      • nafets47

        Member
        April 13, 2021 at 7:34 pm

        Yea I have always been curious what the potential would be of this technology. Especially because it is so small.

        • nafets47

          Member
          April 13, 2021 at 7:36 pm

          Yea I have always been curious what the potential would be of this technology. Especially because it is so small.

          I never quite understood why the large “bump” in size from something so small and inconspicuous from an RF tag to one of these readers. I do get that they have different technology but if they could increase the size of the RF tag ever so slightly to increase range it would be fantastic for this application.

  • Denny

    Member
    May 5, 2021 at 6:42 am

    Tried them, have to say not a fan. Too bulky, didn’t reliably connect/get found in tracking, and I didn’t find them to be rugged enough to survive.

    My go-to is much cheaper… $1.99 for a bottle of gel nail polish (or “borrow” one from your S/O). A few swipes on non wear surfaces of your tools, and they are instantly recognizable in your fellow tech’s tool bag or customer’s “random hand tool” drawer.

    Use an obnoxious color, and added bonus, no one will touch your tools, and they all know who owns the Klein side cutters with the pink nail polish.

    Don’t re engineer the wheel.

    • techtownmayor

      Member
      May 11, 2021 at 12:34 pm

      I have to agree – I tried them for a few weeks, but despite working reliably, they just don’t work for me because of the size. I think that making your tools as obnoxious as possible is one of the best ways of not losing them…

      I watch a lot of videos of repairs, and it is amazing how many technicians climb a roof only to find someone left power tools or other expensive equipment behind. You’d think people would pay more attention to their tools!

  • fixbear

    Member
    May 11, 2021 at 3:10 pm

    I found many a wrench and socket inside machine’s. Mostly in hard to retrieve areas. But I’ve lost 30 ft fiberglass extension ladder, a 5 ft fiberglass 1A step ladders, and even screw guns and a Milwaukee skill saw’s. Hate that! Only two people on the job, but the co-owner was the problem. Found the screw gun in his garage a year later while doing other work. Five foot ladders are hard to come by, but work the best for overhead.

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