TOPIC:

Hey everyone! Yes I'm at it again, messing with old tools! Basically I've gathered all my old bike tool kit tools and given them the Evapo-rust treatment! ,while I was washing and drying them I noticed that the Mito numbers seem to change even for identical looking wrenches! For example two 22mm C spanners, one is mito 2 and the other mito 3, two 13&12mms one mito 7 and one mito 8, two 14&17 one mito 2 and one mito 4, two 10&12s one mito 2 and one mito 5...
Also I've got two Suzuki 14&17 they look identical but on the reverse one is mito and the other RK! Yamahas are blank on the back and Honda just seems to be RK ,plus I have 3 RK ring spanners which could be Honda or Suzuki I suppose? And the third pic is a mystery tool, is it a spoke tool or something?
Do any of you have ideas on all these confusing maker stamps?!!

These are mold numbers from liquid metal.
Highest = number of molds.

Ahhhh cool! I had no idea! I just couldn't figure out why have different numbers !

73z1 wrote: These are mold numbers from liquid metal.
Highest = number of molds.

On those 10/12mm wrenches the - numbers denote mold cavity on a multi cavity mold (die in metal casting)

Interesting, I've just looked up the multi cavity die process, I'm still a little confused on the numbers though! I mean I could see why they might change the number when they changed from the older big K spanner to simply "kawasaki" spanners but it does seem odd when the other side is literally identical and I assume they must have made hundreds of thousands of these. ...perhaps it depends what bike the kit was made for? Maybe I've got 650,900 and 1000 spanners? Not that any of this really matters of course, I'm just very much into Kawasaki and I like to learn about the industry!

From Injected's comment, if I'm reading it right, a mold will have multiple cavities & each cavity is numbered w a different number.
So a 12-cavity mold will have the cavities numbered 1 thru 12. mito-1, mito-2, mito-3, etc. Then for quality control, I would assume if one of the wrenches doesn't come out right for whatever reason such as a flaw in one of the mold cavities, you can more easily identify which wrenches are bad by using the mold number for the bad wrench. just guessing.

Ah yes that makes sense! That must be it, it must be a quality control thing!

Reiterating. That's just a guess.

You're exactly right. It's more efficient to make multiple parts in one mold. But in order to make sure each cavity is correct, and monitor the parts over time, you need to know which parts came out of which cavity.

martin_csr wrote: From Injected's comment, if I'm reading it right, a mold will have multiple cavities & each cavity is numbered w a different number.
So a 12-cavity mold will have the cavities numbered 1 thru 12. mito-1, mito-2, mito-3, etc. Then for quality control, I would assume if one of the wrenches doesn't come out right for whatever reason such as a flaw in one of the mold cavities, you can more easily identify which wrenches are bad by using the mold number for the bad wrench. just guessing.

Bingo...

I worked in the Magnesium Die Casting industry for 10 years so I have a little bit of insight.

I'd love to eventually have a full kit for my Z1000st but there's so damn many tools in these old kits! I think I'm still missing two or three bits and if there were ever feeler gauges in my kit I've got no chance of finding those! !

The feeler gauge comes up every once and a while on ebay. The last one I saw was a couple of months ago. The seller was asking $200.