Having loose nuts or fasteners in your machine can be very dangerous, but if you tighten them with excess amount of force, you might damage its head or you have to struggle a lot when you try to loosen it next time. Hence for a perfectly tightened nut or fastener, open end wrenches or an impact wrench will not be appropriate. For that, you need a torque wrench.
A torque wrench is a device that is used widely in many industries such as automobiles, manufacturing plants, assembly lines, etc. Torque wrenches are preferred over other types of wrenches due to the fact that they are very efficient and give you a very precise operation. Other types of wrenches do not provide such accuracy in operation. Most of the wrenches are not provided with a means of reading the amount of force that is applied to fastener, but the torque wrenches are provided with an analogue or digital meter display, which tells you about the amount of force that you have applied on a particular fastener. This tells you when to stop applying the force and thus saves the nuts head from breaking.
There are, basically, three types of torque wrenches that are available in the market that are simple torque wrench, pneumatic wrench and hydraulic torque wrench.
Simple torque wrench
Simple torque wrenches are simple wrenches provided with an analogue meter where you can determine the amount of force you are applying on the nut. The analogue meter needs to be calibrated regularly as with the long usage, it might start giving wrong readings. There are also simple torque wrenches available, which can be programmed for a predetermined amount of force. Once that level of force is achieved, it produces a click sound, which tells you to stop the application if force.
Pneumatic torque wrench
Pneumatic torque wrench uses compressed air as a source of power for application of torque. It is provided with a digital display, which keeps telling about the amount of torque applied. The pneumatic torque wrenches are very noisy and are not suitable for places where you need silent operations. They are also not very accurate as compared to hydraulic wrenches.
Hydraulic torque wrenches, the most accurate versions of torque wrenches, are provided with an electronic panel and a digital display. These digital display screens provide you the most accurate readings of the force you are applying on the fastener. Additionally, these wrenches are programmable so that you could feed the wrench with a predetermined value of torque to be applied so that when that value of torque is achieved, it automatically stops applying the torque and avoids over-tightening of the fastener. The best feature of hydraulic toque wrench is that they are very silent in operation and are best for places where you want the highest degree of accuracy and least amount of noise.
Hydraulic Torque Wrenches | Torque Wrenches 