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Wednesday, October 08, 2008
Are You Smarter Than A Bolt?
Toolmonger: "Of course you’re smarter than a bolt, but SmartBolts are still pretty crafty — they can show you if they’re loose, tight, or overtightened. For the average Toolmonger, this is overkill; we’ll break out the torque wrench if we need to know when the bolt’s tight enough. When it’s not critical, the grunt method works — one grunt for tight, two grunts for really tight. However, neither of these methods will show you if a bolt has loosened over time."
I think that these could be somewhat useful, but really, how necessary are they? If you use tools enough, you know how long their average tight time is. If you do routine checks, everything will be ok. That being said, these bolts could be usefull in certain situations where quick checks are necessary. One of the comments on the site said that they'd be helpful in his science center for fast checks. Perhaps this would be good. But $20/bolt is an expense piece of hardware.... better not lose it.
ReplyDeleteThis is a really cool idea, i would like to see the price drop a little, considering that the price of one bolt is comprable to a box in some other brands. If there is a place where you might need them for a routine inspection where it would be impractical to bring a torque wrench with you, it would be nice to be able to use this visual indicator. I don't think this would really be good for general bolting usage, simply due to the price per bolt.
ReplyDeleteIts a good idea for safety reasons, but for this industry its a bit pointless. Too pricey for the short application, and will have to take a lot of wear and tear. This would be better suited for long term installations where the bolts are a necessary component in safety.
ReplyDeleteThese bolts, although incredibly expensive, are perfect for applications where fasteners are likely to loosen overtime, and the loosening could result in catastrophic failure. If you ever look at the bolts that hold together roller coasters, they have a paint pen line that shows if they have turned at all. The article also makes a good point that tension and torque are not necessarily directly related, so these bolts are great for situations where the material being fastened might change with the environmental conditions. It will take more torque to provide the same amount of tension on a piece that has swelled due to humidity for example. And when the piece shrinks back down, you want to know that the bolt is now loose. A cool invention but I'd like to see a more positive indication that the bolt is properly tightened.
ReplyDeleteThese seem like a really good idea, but I think the cost is pretty prohibitive. If you're just going to do a few of these, I guess it's cheaper than buying a torque wrench, but if you're going to need this application frequently, you might as well buy a torque wrench. However, I do agree that the visual indicator is good for checking things over time. I'm not sure how much I would rely on this, though.
ReplyDeletei initially was going to strike these down and just say "why not get out the torque wrench"
ReplyDeletethen i read the bit about torque not being equal to tension. i'd never thought about this fact, especially since almost all assembly instructions give ratings in torque values, not tension. there's no really good way to measure tension in a bolted connection (that i know of), so these bolts are the only way to do so.
now i wonder what the range of ratings these can be calibrated to. it'd be useful to set your desired rating in the middle so that way you have a sense of overtightening.
it's also going to be a pain to keep tightening, then taking the wrench off to look, then tightening some more, then ...