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When most people think of manufacturing, they picture a big factory where hundreds or thousands of workers stand in line to clock in for their shifts. Even though these factories do exist, they are not very common and only belong to a small group of companies with enough customers to support such large-scale production. Most companies that make things do so on a smaller scale and with less standardization. In making emergency equipment, for example, a company might only make a few ambulance bodies at a time. During the same production run, these bodies might be put on truck chassis from different manufacturers with different mounting points and fastener sizes.
Torque control is equally important to these manufacturers. It’s just more difficult to standardize fasteners and fastener kinds. What is the solution? A torque wrench with reversible heads. Workers may wander about the factory floor, tightening fasteners to the desired specifications as needed.
Why Should You Use a Torque Wrench with Interchangeable Heads?
Large production centers with assembly lines have a number of different stations that are linked together by a way to move the products from one station to the next. The whole assembly line is made so products can be put together as quickly and easily as possible. At each station on the assembly line, there are only a few or a single type of fasteners and a few assembly tasks to do. Most of the time, each station only needs a single type of torque wrench with a single type of head.
The same is not always true for manufacturing at smaller assembly operations. In the previous example of making emergency equipment, vehicles are often built on chassis that the manufacturer already has. The agency that put in the order will tell the manufacturer how big the bodies should be, what equipment they should be able to hold, and other details. There can be a lot of differences from one order to the next. Basically, every purchase is made to fit the buyer’s needs, and there aren’t many cost-effective ways to make production more uniform.
This implies that a significant portion of the assembly process is carried out by a small group of competent workers using readily available equipment. From adjusting brake lines on the bare chassis to installing and testing hydraulic and air lines on the body after it has been built, a single individual may be in charge of everything. While many of the bolts on the chassis and mechanical systems may be tightened using a click or cam-over socket torque wrench with a ratchet head, they cannot be completely seated on an air or hydraulic line connection or on certain nuts that are threaded onto long stud bolts.
But torque is still important for these connections. This is especially true for air and hydraulic lines, which need a perfect seal to work well and are more likely to break if they are over-torqued. In these cases, assemblers need a torque wrench with interchangeable heads that can be switched out as needed and used on fasteners where sockets won’t fit.
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