1/2" DR. Deep Hexagon Socket (20mm)

Name: 1/2" DR. Deep Hexagon Socket (20mm)
Brand: Harden
SKU: 535550

Item No. 535550

Price on request

Twenty millimetres deep is one of the less common sizes and, as with its standard counterpart, that is precisely what makes it worth owning — the sizes nobody stocks are the ones that stop a job.

It reaches M14 studs in some patterns and appears on heavier suspension and driveline assemblies, agricultural and industrial machinery, generator and pump mountings, and imported plant. The deep form is needed wherever the nut sits on a stud with thread projecting past it, or down inside a recess where a standard socket and its ratchet cannot reach.

At this size it is worth thinking about the whole tool chain rather than only the socket. A deep socket puts the ratchet further from the fastener than a standard one does, and that extra height does two things. It magnifies any misalignment — a couple of degrees of tilt at the ratchet becomes a noticeable amount at the nut, and a socket sitting at an angle bears on the tips of the hex, which is how nuts get rounded. And it adds a longer twisting column between the drive and the work, so the whole assembly is slightly less rigid than a standard socket would be. Neither matters on a fastener that turns freely. On a heavy, corroded one, both do, and the answer is to make sure the socket is fully home and dead square before you pull, and to use a standard socket whenever it will reach.

The socket is drop forged from fine chrome vanadium with a matt chrome finish. Forging heats the steel and hammers it into a die, flowing the internal grain around the hexagonal form rather than cutting through it — which matters at the six corners of the hex, where every bit of the stress in a socket concentrates, and matters more on a long thin-walled barrel than on a short stubby one.

The buyers are commercial vehicle and plant mechanics, agricultural and estate engineering, industrial and factory maintenance, generator and pump servicing, and hardware dealers supplying industry.

Two rules. Seat the socket fully and square before applying force. And never use a chrome hand socket on an impact wrench — plated hardened chrome vanadium is brittle under impact hammering, cracks, and throws fragments at speed; impact tools need the black chrome molybdenum sockets that exist as a separate range here. Ask us on WhatsApp for a price, or for a group of the sizes your set is missing.