In any application where the fastening of bolts and screws is critical—which includes aerospace, automotive, medical device, electronics, and packaging industries, to name a few—businesses depend on torque tools to deliver the precise amount of force necessary to hold a fastener in place indefinitely. Whether you’re in manufacturing or maintenance, the most important attributes your…
Archimedes famously said that given a long enough lever and a place to stand, he could move the world. Contrary to Archimedes’ expectations, much of the machinery that moves the world isn’t large but small. And for most, the challenge isn’t finding a large enough lever but rather one that is correctly sized and precise…
Nearly everything we eat, wear, or place in our homes moves on a pallet. Lifting those pallets are ANSI B56.1-1969 standard powered industrial trucks—better known as forklifts. If you buy a product in a store, it has been moved by a forklift at some point. The everyday operation of warehouses, distribution centers, and, indeed, the…
We’re all familiar with the old television trope of characters not being able to pay for a meal. The friend who promised to pay for dinner dashes out, and the remaining person finds their wallet empty or has their credit card declined. Cut to the character up to their elbows in sudsy water, washing dishes…
As tunnel workers know, boring machines are anything but. Ranging from merely large to staggeringly huge, these complicated devices chew through loam, clay, and solid rock to excavate large and small tunnels across the world. What’s also enormous is the degree to which the success of a tunneling project rests on the proper maintenance of…
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…
Throughout the fastening process, a common risk for torque failures is the operator’s influence of operating a torque tool. Often, some types of wrenches are susceptible to torque failures and over torque occurrences. Inadequate tool or process training, as well as an operator’s decision to apply additional force are common symptoms for quality control failures.…