Quality assurance for safety critical joints 25 June 2024

Consistency of critical joints is essential to ensuring product quality and safety, as incorrect tightening and torque checks can lead to product failure, resulting in costly rework. Because of this, Atlas Copco Tools and Industrial Assembly Solutions has developed the STRwrench Advanced to give manufacturers ‘real time’ quality assurance analysis of manual safety critical joints.

Research by Atlas Copco has found that a single minute of downtime due to a safety critical joint failure can cost up to GB£10,000 in lost production. STRwrench Advanced has therefore been designed so it can still collect data in the event of a network shutdown.

STRwrench Advanced is Wi-Fi enabled with a large touchscreen interface, specially designed to be used with safety gloves. It delivers precision residual torque and breakaway torque checks and, featuring an integrated controller, enables joint check analysis in ‘real time’, reporting data to Atlas Copco’s quality assurance platform, QA Supervisor (QAS), which provides manufacturers with full assembly traceability. This software can be integrated into customer QA systems for auditing even the most challenging assembly processes.

“Our new STRwrench Advanced is a key component of Atlas Copco’s Smart Integrated Ecosystem that’s been developed to support manufacturers across all sectors, in a collective journey to Smart factory production. STRwrench Advanced provides a flexible and scalable QA process to ensure product quality and safety, whilst minimising the financial impact of assembly line shutdowns and product rework,” comments James McAllister, general manager at Atlas Copco Tools and Industrial Assembly Solutions.  

Assistant Editor

Becca England Assistant Editor t: +44 (0) 1727 615 413

Biog

Becca is the latest member to join our team and is eager to get stuck into the world of fasteners. She brings an enthusiastic and fresh outlook on what we do editorially and will be leading our social media activity – including sourcing material, editing articles and posting online.