It’s part of a joint for the handle of an electric snowblower I have. It’s a cool looking part for sure, but it was easy to recreate as a model to print.

But after breaking the original injection molded glass re-enforced nylon and 3 other home printed parts, I redesigned the joint to be a single piece solid part. So while I can’t fold the handle down for storage, it no longer breaks.

Traumas are cool, but medicals are the true challenge to your skills. They can be intricate puzzles that can test you to the brink.

Or if you can scrounge up a guitar string, you can simply make your own coil spring from scratch.

Yeah, there a few cars out there that do have safety glass rather than just tempered glass installed as side windows. But they are fairly uncommon due to the high cost and at least one engineer’s thought that safety glass might not be the safest thing in that application. Because it does make it more difficult to quickly gain access to an injured person if needed.

I think BMW has a couple models with safety glass for side windows. But it’s been a hot minute since I have needed to concern myself with such minutia.

I did forget to add the warning to that. That because it’s amazing what still works, you need to be very careful because of those things that still function. Things might look safe but a bump or just bad luck something decides it’s going to move or spin due to a stray electrical impulse or release of stored energy. And now you are part of the problem.

Scene Safety above all else!

Keep your Irons in hand, your head on a swivel, and be safe out there and have some fun!

All work done in FreeCad.

My favorite personally reverse engineered part

And a favorite design I use every day a holder for my loose tea strainer to catch draining water

Before cordless sawzall’s became a thing, every fire depadtment/rescue squad would make up a handle that you could attach a used sawzall blade to for cutting safety glass windshields. And they still carry them to this day as a backup. They are amazingly effective. You just need a hole to get started.

These days, every rescue/fire truck carries a cordless sawzall as the go to for such jobs. No special blade required.

You are thinking about Safety glass and not tempered glass. safety glass has plastic film laminated between some layers of glass.

Tempered glass doesn’t have that and when stressed at a small point, crumbles quite satisfyingly easy.

Tempered glass will break easily with either an impact style glass breaker or the automatic punch type. Most cars use tempered glass for side windows. As a retired medic who has done more than my share of nasty car accidents, I absolutely hate impact glass breakers like you find on “Rescue knives”. They almost always send broken glass shards all over my patient and I’m forced to kneel in said glass while working. The auto punch style tends to drop the glass shards more straight down minimizing having glass everywhere.

More Pro Tips from an old firefighter/rescue squad/medic: a $3.50US Harbor Freight auto center punch works as well for breaking glass as those fancy $50US glass breakers and is a worthy addition to your glove box. Toss a pencil and paper in there to take notes if needed also.

Safety glass cannot be broken with a glass breaker because it’s a laminated glass with a plastic film holding everything together. It can be sawed with something as simple as a dull reciprocating saw blade though. But you need to get a hole into it first. A fire ax is probably the go to tool for that, but a Halligan tool will also work. (Pro tip: A Halligan tool will solve most issues involving things that block your way.) Some cars do use safety glass for side windows.

Super Important Pro Tip: Always, always try before you pry. No matter how bad an accident scene might look, it’s amazing at what still works. Doors open, seat belts release, (in 20 years I never needed to cut a seat belt), and widows roll down, (even electric ones).

Final Pro Tip: Always, always be cautious when approaching a wreak. Stay away from the low side of a wreak and be super extra fearful of a car on it’s side. Look under the car before you get close. Look for leaking fluids. Stay up wind of an EV if you see any kind smoke. Those fumes can kill you. Be wary of undetonated air bags. Don’t stick your head into the car. About 100 cops are killed every year in the US because they get stupid and stick their heads into that situation.

All in all, the ultimate rule in rescue is “You are there to be a part of the solution to the problem. Don’t be stupid and become part of the problem.”

I had a 486DX running DOS for writing and editing CAM programs for CNC mills, lathes, pipe bender, and a laser cutter. And for funsies, an even older Macintosh that booted from a 5 1/4" floppy that ran a CMM, (co-ordinate measuring machine). And the software for the CMM ran from another 5 1/4" floppy.

This was about 2017 before I retired as a toolmaker.

Thanks for pointing that out Captain Obvious. And I earned the tee shirt for needing to make that decision-- more than once.

If you buy software at a version point, (vs the subscription model), why would you expect an update for it? Particularly for free? You chose to buy at a frozen point.

For all the times I have done CPR or those times I have to deal with a major trauma, never once did I see Jesus there waiting to take a turn at chest compressions, I never once saw the Holy Ghost crawl into an upside down car wreak with me, and God sure as hell was not there when I had to scale up out of that 20ft deep drainage ditch and had to explain to a Mother that her 11 year old son was dead under that 4-wheeler and there was nothing anyone could do to fix that.

God ain’t never had anything to do with it.

So why do we do CPR? Why do we use AEDs? Was all the CPR I have done a waste of time?

Dead means you are going to stay that way. Dead is irreversible. And until I and/or a doctor say you are dead, you are not. You are just maybe dead.

No it’s not. It only becomes a criteria when you can no longer reasonably be sure that it can’t be restarted.

Source: Retired medic that has pronounced my share of dead people AND restarted a few hearts also.

As an old and retired medic, the lack of respiration and pulse doesn’t mean you are dead-dead. On the scale of "Not Dead to Dead-Dead, a lack of respiration’s and pulse means you are at the maybe dead on the line. And other factors will make the final determination about if you are actually dead or not.

The first determining factor in figuring out where the patient is on the scale, is if you make it into my amp-a-lamps or not. If you do, you are alive at least for a little while longer and I’mma let the doctor sort it all out for you. If you don’t make it in the back of my bus, then you are dead-dead and nothing can change that-- not even god himself.

As an old and now retired medic. My personal definition of dead was if you made into the back of my amp-a-lamps or not. If you did you weren’t dead-- you were merely having a bit of a bad day. I might have needed to do your breathing for you and I might have needed to make your heart pump blood. But until some doctor somewhere decided you weren’t worth his time and effort, you were still alive. Because I don’t haul dead people.

So, by my definition as a trained and professional medical person, you where never dead-dead. Just someone have a bad day among many others having a bad day at that time.

It’s a good thing that the lack of a heartbeat isn’t the ultimate definition of dead. But it can be one of the markers of dead.

An SUV Land Rover, (with all it’s mechanical unreliability), isn’t suitable for long heavy tow loads at high speeds. Nor have I ever seen a Land Rover with a 5th wheel hitch in my life. And there is no dealer within 300+ miles of me.

So Stop trying to get me to buy a Land Rover.