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 M&M’s in the bowls backstage, he could safely assume that the venue hadn’t paid attention to the important technical details in his contract. As production workers well know, these little details can quickly add up to big, dangerous problems.
If you don’t have lights, you don’t have a show. Every performance or athletic venue, from a community black box theatre to a college stadium to a rock arena, depends on their lighting and sound equipment. Outdoor events, like carnivals or campaign speeches, rely on dozens to hundreds of lights and amplifiers to reach their audience. Lights are set up or taken down monthly, or even weekly for traveling shows. Often, they hang above their audience.
For lighting and sound professionals, ensuring the lights stay on is as much a matter of safety and professionalism as it is about putting on a good show. Falling lights are the nightmare of stage managers and venue owners, and it’s up to technicians and their managers to guarantee these fears don’t ever see the light of day. When hanging lights or erecting temporary lighting frameworks, professionals depend on quality torque tools for peace of mind.
Using Torque Tools in Safe Event Lighting Setup
Large, hanging lights and speakers are often attached to their perches with threaded fasteners, like nuts and bolts or by hard plastic grips, which are themselves attached to the light with threaded fasteners. These fasteners are used because they can easily be loosened or tightened, allowing for simple set-up, take-down, and adjustment.
If these fasteners are too loose or too tight, the lights can lose their position and hang or fall. If they’re too loose, nuts can work free and bolts can fall out. If they’re too tight, the assembly can warp or crack. Threads can become locked, preventing removal. Or, damage to the assembly can worsen over time, allowing the fastener to fall free or the assembly to fail outright. These possibilities are increased by the constant expansion and contraction of materials under the strong heating and cooling effects of powerful lights, as well as the thumping sonic vibrations of high-output sound equipment.
Each fastener, in each assembly, has an ideal range of torque tolerance. Torque is the radial force which turns a screw, bolt, or nut, compressing its threads against its receptacle. Simply turning a bolt until it feels snug or cranking it until you can’t crank further cannot guarantee that the right amount of torque has been applied. The only way to be sure is to use a tool which can limit the amount of torque to a specific quantity.
The Best Torque Tools for Lighting Setup
Workplace conditions dictate the best types of torque tools for hanging event lights and sound equipment. Specifically, it’s the part about hanging. The job often requires workers to use lifts, scaffolds, or catwalks to place and affix their equipment. Moving from one station to the next is the slowest part of the job, so a slightly slower tool speed won’t affect the overall job length much. As such, hand tools or cordless torque tools are ideal. They’re lightweight, effective, and don’t depend on outlets or air compressors. Best of all, they make sure each fastener is tightened to the exact amount it needs.
There are a few different types of hand torque tools and cordless electric drills. The three main types of torque hand tools are click wrenches, break-over wrenches, and cam-over wrenches.
Cam-over wrenches eliminate the possibility of over or under-torque conditions entirely. They have an internal clutch that slips when the prescribed torque amount is reached. Any extra force the operator exerts just spins the wrench; it won’t be applied to the fastener. This also stops operators from under torquing, as it allows them to freely apply torque, knowing that the wrench will stop them in time.
Break-over wrenches “break” or deflect at a hinge point on the driver when their operator applies the right amount of torque. Either automatically or by hand, they must be reset before torque is applied. This makes applying the right amount of torque easy for an operator—just turn the wrench until it breaks.
Click wrenches, while the most common, are also the least effective means of limiting the torque an operator applies. These wrenches emit an audible click when torque is reached, and deflect for approximately three degrees. After that, the operator is free to apply as much torque as they like. While the click is noticeable, it can be drowned out in noisy environments or if the operator is wearing ear protection. Click wrenches can be used to apply the right amount of torque, but only with proper training and a sensitive ear.
For a slight increase in speed and price, lighting and sound technicians can turn to cordless torque wrenches. These tools, similar to cam-over wrenches, rely on internal mechanisms to prevent over-torque conditions. While faster than hand tools, they are also heavier and must be recharged continuously to maintain proper torque output.
Before the show goes on, the lights must go on. A lot of work goes into hanging, focusing, and adjusting lighting and sound equipment for entertainment, athletics, and politics. The best way to make sure that work pays off is to sit back and enjoy the show, knowing that you’ve done the job right. Using the right torque tools give professionals peace of mind and the certainty that everything will go according to plan.
