What is this object? It looks like a machine tool part. Who made it? It came as BNC.3DS or Bnc.3ds, made 26 July 1996, 86524 bits, zipping to 26553 bits in bcc.zip . This image displays 4 copies of it. Posed in Poser 4.0.3, exported as .OBJ and rendered in Bryce 5 to get a completely unsmoothed render.

hmmm looks like a BNC connector to me (ethernet and the like) Not sure who made however, sorry. /gz

What do the initials BNC stand for? The model as I received it was cram full of reversed-normals.

"What do the initials BNC stand for?" Good question; there are several answers, possibly apocryphal. Webopedia.com gives the following answer: "British Naval Connector or Bayonet Nut Connector or Bayonet Neill Concelman" The Amphenol homepage has this convincing-sounding explanation: Developed in the late 1940s as a miniature version of the Type C connector, BNC stands for Bayonet Neill Concelman and is named after Amphenol engineer Carl Concelman. The BNC product line is a miniature quick connect/disconnect RF connector. It features two bayonet lugs on the female connector; mating is achieved with only a quarter turn of the coupling nut. BNCs are ideally suited for cable termination for miniature to subminiature coaxial cable

BNC connectors are pretty much -the- universal coaxial connector in radio and audio work. Just about every measuring or processing instrument (oscilloscopes, signal generators, filters, etc) is equipped with BNC. What you have is the plug (male) side of the connection. This picture, which I made a while ago for an instructional animation, shows a BNC plug about to be fitted to a BNC-to-phone adaptor. You can see the bayonet prongs on the BNC female.

Thanks for the explanation, Ockham. I also have a copy of that 3DS model and never knew what it was supposed to be.

"What do the initials BNC stand for? The model as I received it was cram full of reversed-normals" Backward Normals Connector, obviously.

Also known as "Backfacing Normals Connector". ;)

Whatever I thought it was, it is 262.208 units long, which is nearly half a mile by Poser scaling, and I stored it as C:3dmodelsindustrialbnc.zip .

I run into this every day at work; we still have a few buildings wired for coax..usually need a 'T' connector and a terminator to get them to work on the local PC's..they're a bit passe', but then you can't piggyback Rj-45 (cat 5 or so) together..;)

stand it up on the wide end and it'll be a dandy castle ....

Yeah, you can't piggyback Rj-45 cables, you need a port for each in the hub, but on the other hand, if a student trips and tears a cable out of the BNC connector you don't loose the whole room, either! ;-)