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Re: Low cost torque wrenches Posted by TML [Email] (#2212) [Profile/Gallery] (more from TML) on Thu, 27 Jun 2013 09:25:44 In Reply to: Low cost torque wrenches, steve, Wed, 26 Jun 2013 06:00:35 Members do not see ads below this line. - Help Keep This Site Online - Signup |
I spent 12 or so years calibrating torque wrenches almost daily. There may be some good, cheap ones out there, but they are few and far between (sadly, quite a lot of expensive ones are downright awful as well), and there's no way to know what you're going to get. Anecdotal endorsement is of little value, because how many people can even tell if their "works great" torque wrench is actually torquing what they set it to? If you don't have the ability (and more importantly, the motivation) to check the calibration yourself, then you are honestly better off just using a standard wrench and guessing. Calibrating is more complicated than it might seem. Sure, you can rig up a fixture with the right size socket to mount the torque wrench into and hang different weights off the handle, but this is only a vague indication of how it will torque in a real world situation; there's a difference between static and dynamic loading. These cheap torque wrenches are marketed to people who will never have them checked out or re-calibrated. The companies know this, and rely on it. Most of them would be out-of-box failures if accuracy was an actual requirement. I would recommend buying a digital torque wrench, even a cheap one, because they are actually a much simpler device, and the electronic method of measuring torque is far more reliable than the click-type mechanical.
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