5 ms·

> Because we need to track critical bolt rundowns (generically called fasteners) and tool condition. Unpopular opinion: I'm not convinced we need internet conn

> Because we need to track critical bolt rundowns (generically called fasteners) and tool condition. Unpopular opinion: I'm not convinced we need internet connected wrenches for this. We may want or be excited about, e.g., monitoring torque with internet connected wrenches, but I'm not convinced we need them. This may be a scaling issue, related to being able to make things faster with less experience and oversight. I'm generally skeptical of the unintended consequences of scaling production like that, and it may be giving me a bias. But I stand by the statement that there is no fundamental requirement to make wrenches connect to the internet in order to manufacture sensitive equipment.

iSnow 3y ago
Strictly speaking, we don't need it. But there's real demand in the industry to use networked IoT devices wherever possible and harvest the data so you can do things like QC (hand an audit trail to your customer that all bolts have been tightened with the exactly right torque) or preventive maintenance. No one wants to fall back to non-networked ways of manufacturing.
- bobim 3y ago
  I don’t see how this is working. The QC audit will just testify that a bolt, somewhere, has been tightened. Or we need nuts with chips that communicate with the wrench and the part it’s fastening.
  - bigbillheck 3y ago
    You'd also be logging time of tightening, location of the wrench (to some granularity), user of the wrench, and so on, and on the other side you'd be tracking the state of whatever it is you're building so you know where it is at all times and can cross-reference.
  - iSnow 3y ago
    You also track who tightened the bolt when with which torque (could be wrong if the machine is defective and that is exactly what you want to be able to audit). Some machines are even able to tell in which spatial position they were used - kind of a micro-GPS. Some trials are running with AR glasses that show the position of a bolt to the operator and also log the actions.

iSnow 3y ago

Strictly speaking, we don't need it. But there's real demand in the industry to use networked IoT devices wherever possible and harvest the data so you can do things like QC (hand an audit trail to your customer that all bolts have been tightened with the exactly right torque) or preventive maintenance. No one wants to fall back to non-networked ways of manufacturing.

bobim 3y ago
I don’t see how this is working. The QC audit will just testify that a bolt, somewhere, has been tightened. Or we need nuts with chips that communicate with the wrench and the part it’s fastening.
- bigbillheck 3y ago
  You'd also be logging time of tightening, location of the wrench (to some granularity), user of the wrench, and so on, and on the other side you'd be tracking the state of whatever it is you're building so you know where it is at all times and can cross-reference.
- iSnow 3y ago
  You also track who tightened the bolt when with which torque (could be wrong if the machine is defective and that is exactly what you want to be able to audit). Some machines are even able to tell in which spatial position they were used - kind of a micro-GPS. Some trials are running with AR glasses that show the position of a bolt to the operator and also log the actions.