Selecting Torque Tester for In-House Cal

A medical manufacturer was spending too much money on outside calibration services and needed to cut cost and ensure torque tools were calibrated on a regular basis. Each time any of the hand and electric screwdrivers was shipped out to the calibration service provider, it would cause production delays and increase costs.

Looking to eliminate the lost production time and the cost of sending the torque tools out for calibration service, the quality manager and process engineer began searching for a cost-effective method for in house calibration and documentation of calibration records for traceability of their torque tools.

The engineer was searching for a torque testing system that offered portability, expandability, and documentation control, which would meet the demands to test multiple torque ranges for the various torque tools used in their production.

After meeting with a Mountz representative and discussing their needs, the engineers, selected the Mountz TorqueLab LTT torque analyzer along with some BMX torque sensors. The LTT featured the new EZ-Plug & Play technology, which is an auto-recognition system with Mountz torque sensors. The EZ-Plug & Play feature of the LTT expedited the process of setting up and running tool tests, as well as the transfer, analysis and storage of test data for ISO/SPC documentation purposes.

The LTT torque tester solution allowed for easy data sharing. After the torque readings were recorded, the data points could easily be uploaded from the device's flash memory to a PC through a USB interface. Once uploaded, the test data can be shared with other users over the regular computer network. The LTT torque tester and BMX torque sensors provided the engineers with an in house simple torque testing system that eliminated the cost for outside services. The calibration system greatly reduced the downtime for tools waiting to be sent out and returned.

The medical manufacturer was spending $15,000 per year for outside calibration services. Instead, the medical manufacturer had a one-time cost of $4,500 for all of the torque calibration equipment and only pays $1,200 per year for calibrating the torque analyzer & sensor system.