I will never forget my first day with Ingersoll Rand, for many reasons. One of the more memorable things about my first day was realizing how little I actually knew about the world of tools and automotive service. During one of my meetings, I remember a discussion about one of our tool’s power output, and a strange word kept being used. Since I’m not one scared to ask questions, I threw out my first one. What is a foot-pound? After a few smiles from some of the engineers, they began to run me through a simple description.
Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a foot-pound as “a unit of work equal to the work done by a force of one pound acting through a distance of one foot in the direction of the force.” Sounds pretty complicated but it’s really a simple concept.
Say you are trying to tighten a nut to 10 ft-lb. The amount of torque required to tighten the fastener is equal to 10 pounds on the end of a 1 foot lever or 1 pound on the end of a 10 foot lever.
Keeping this in mind, the fact that our 2135TiMAX provides 780 ft-lb of torque with a weight of only 3.95 lb is truly amazing. Have you ever found an application that you didn’t have enough power for when using an Impactool? If so, tell us a little more about it and we will see what we can do to help you out…
Interesting topic and one that we should continue to think about. A challenge we all have is translating engineering specs into something relevant to our customers. In our day to day we get used and are aware what a ft-lb of torque means or a cfm or a gpm, I have always found that these have variable relevancy to our customers depending on their expertise and level of product knowledge. At the end of the day they are interested in how our product helps them do their job better/easier/more effectively — can he/she loosen the fastener he needs? Good! Can he/she power the tools he need with the compressor he has? Can he empty/tranfer chemicals fast enough? So a critical questions for us all: how do we take engineering specs and translate into something our customers care about?
Thanks for the comment Manlio. You are absolutely right, at the end of the day, our customers buy our tools to get a job done. Our challenge is to design them to be versatile enough to meet not only their highest requirements, but also to be able to provide them with the control to perform smaller tasks as well – all without sacrificing durability. Our recent usage of ODI has pushed us to focus more on our customer’s jobs, and when combined with extensive field research on applications, it allows us to do a much better job at ensuring our products help our customer’s get their work done efficiently by setting engineering specs that are relevant.
OK, Manlio brought up cfm. cfm is a huge factor in how an air tool works, but is there a cost effective way to measure it on site, (at a customers hose end) this would solve a lot of arguing, when a customer says his tool doesn’t have enough power…but is beat up old CP will get the job done!
The TOOL-HLP line has been very helpful with the specs, but unless I can show the consumer he doesn’t have enough cfm, it usually falls on def ears.
You’re right Skip, proper air line pressure (CFM) does have a very direct impact (pun intended) on the performance of an air tool. Like you said, the important thing to remember is that the pressure coming out of the compressor is not always going to be the same that you will see at the end of an air line. Between the long runs of piping, connectors, FRLs, and loose fittings – a lot of air pressure is typically lost in the process. We recommend our tools to run at 90 PSI, and you will find that performance results will vary greatly for different tools at lower pressures.
In reference to your question about measuring the end-of-line pressure, what you really want to know is the running (when the tool is running) or dynamic pressure, not just the static pressure (gauge directly on the end of the hose with no tool). You could probably put together a fairly simple set-up to allow you to do this with a “t” pipe fitting. Connect the air hose in with one end of the T, a pressure gauge on the top of the T, and the line out to the tool on the other side of the T. This will allow you to measure both the static and running air pressures, and you might be surprised how much lower than 90 PSI the reading is when running the tool. If you give this a shot, I’d love to hear what static and running pressure readings you find at the end of the lines!
Amazing, truly great info. This blog is really awesome. I bookmarked it and may come back again.
Thanks for your support and enthusiasm for our blog Mariann. We will keep writing if you keep coming back! You can also tell us any topics related to our products and services you would like us to blog about and we will make it happen.
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