Back when I visited Festool’s factory in Germany (image below), I got to see workers assembling a variety of their power tools. At their workstations, the workers had these cool automatic screwdrivers hanging overhead. When they needed to drive a fastener, they grabbed the tool, brought it down to the work and the screw was automatically driven with the correct torque.
I didn’t get to see who made these wondrous driving tools, but I think I’ve just found out. My wife used to work in a manufacturing facility that employed identical tools, and she believes it’s a German company called Deprag. Sadly their videos are kind of awful, though the tools are very cool:
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Is it me, or does it sound like the narrator’s wife and children are being held hostage to force him to record this? In any case, Deprag’s latest versions are designed with automatic screw/nut feeders:
Prior to that innovation, they had screw-feeding machines:
A Chinese company called G-Wei makes similar tools. Here’s a video of how they’re used on a production line:
It reminds me a bit of those overhead flex shaft grinder workstations.
Source: core77