Clamps or Torques - What Do You Really Need?

The theory of the olden days about the tighter a screw is, the more secure and dependable that mechanism becomes. Like many things from, “back in the day”, this theory was proven wrong because just because something is fitted tightly doesn’t mean it’s doing the job effectively. So, as it turns out, we were wrong about torque all along.

What is torque you may ask? Torque is the action of turning a nut, small round metal piece, onto a bolt of any shape or size. That motion and is what everyone in the industry, refers to as torque. This article will hopefully break down the difference between torque and its cousin, clamp.

While torque and clamp really aren’t the same thing they can help determine one another. While torque handles all the initial force applied to a bolt, clamp records the effectiveness of the joint that is being torqued. In other words, one can not exist without the other.

Clamp is the more reliable way to read and calculate the long-term effects that are taking place on a joint, the point where the bolt and nut meet. When you are able to monitor this area, you can understand the longevity of this connection and be able to determine if these two parts are a good match for one another in the long term.

While clamp can be very unpredictable, when it works, it tells us a lot about what is going on inside all of our machines.