Modern farming is a capital-intensive industry. The large machines that family farms and corporate farming operations employ to seed, weed, tend, and harvest can represent sizeable portions of multiple years worth of revenue. In order for the farm to succeed, these tractors, combines, harvesters, and other large pieces of equipment must do enough work to…
Bad news from the backcountry. After two weeks of waiting for the right weather conditions, a local extreme skier lifted off in a light helicopter this morning to drop into fresh powder on a technical slope at 13,000 ft, hoping to shoot some high-quality action footage. The flight and the drop went okay—just not the…
When Van Halen toured, they included in their contract a singular technical demand: bowls of M&M’s backstage, with all the brown ones removed. Rock star arrogance and capriciousness? Actually, no. The shows they put on were complex and technical, involving excessively heavy staging and sometimes explosive pyrotechnics. So when David Lee Roth would find brown…
Roller coasters are thrilling. Riders soar and dive and flip upside down. They get blasted out of tunnels and splashed down through ponds. It’s an experience that causes people to grip their handrails, white-knuckled, to scream in terror, to pant for breath, and, when it’s over, to laugh. The intended effect is to expose riders…
For some areas in the United States, winter isn’t the end of the year; winter is the year. Winter is when the ponds ice over for fishing, the falls freeze for climbing, and the snow covers the ground for skiing. It’s when the hockey sticks come out of the closet, the snowshoes get tightened, and…
The Importance of Validating Torque Wrenches in Tire Shops When you’re running a tire shop, you’re not just selling tires. You’re selling safety and security, the knowledge that when a customer drives away, they’re driving on a set of wheels that’s safe for the road. As a matter of course, the work you do on…
It doesn’t all come down to nuts and bolts. Specialty manufacturers of aerospace or automotive parts, medical devices, and packaging often must deliver precise amounts of torque to non-standard fasteners. The range of non-standard fasteners is broad enough to escape simple description, but examples include eye-bolts, clevises, oil filters, syringe caps, and even hex-head bolts…
If you’re operating a manufacturing or service facility that uses torque wrenches, knowing the cost of calibrating your tools is essential to generating an accurate projected summary of ongoing costs. Torque tools require calibration. If the products you create or service have torque tolerances specific enough to require torque tools, you’ll need to periodically calibrate…
Your tools are your business. When they’re down, so are you. So, when a torque tool you depend on gets broken, it’s only natural to want to get it fixed as soon as possible. If you’re not in the business of making or repairing torque tools, this can take some time, and time, as you…
If you’re working in manufacturing or repair, there’s a strong chance you’re already using some variety of torque wrench. In any application where the fastening of bolts and screws is critical—which includes the aerospace, automotive, medical device, electronics, and packaging industries, to name a few—businesses depend on torque tools to deliver the precise amount of…