If you watch this video, you get to watch my alter ego "Wrenchin' Roger" put the DTS Electronic Torque and Angle wrench from Digitool Solutions to the test against the gold standard of torque wrenches.
I was very happy for two reasons. First, my expensive torque wrench doesn't need to be calibrated yet, which saves me money. Second, the Digitool Solutions torque wrench was extremely impressive.
To sum it up, which you can gather from the video, these are the features which are unique to the DTS torque wrench, aside from extreme accuracy:
- Units can be changed between ft/lbs, in/lbs and nM with a click of the button. This means not having to look up conversions, which take up time throughout the day.
- The unit doesn't click, but rather vibrates and flashes colors to indicate if you are too loose (yellow), accurate (green) or over-tight (red). This allows greater accuracy, as you can still over-tighten even after a click with a regular torque wrench if you keep pushing after missing that it clicked. Maybe that never happens to you, but it does to me.
- For fasteners where you cannot look up specs, the tool can tell you how tight the fastener is before you take it off. This is awesome. When you are in doubt, you can always put the fastener back exactlyat the torque in qhich you found it.
- On that note, the torque wrench can be a useful sales tool. With customers coming from another shop to you the first time, it is not surprising to find the other shop over torqued everything. Sometimes this breaks aluminum oil pans, oil filter housings or even lug nuts. Imagine how much smarter you look when you feel that something is going to break when you take it off, so you warn the customer: "Hey, I just measured this thing. It has been torqued to twice the spec. If I can't get it off without breaking it, you have to pay me to fix it because it's not my fault." A normal torque wrench cannot do this.
- If you are on a budget or want more flexibility to torque fasteners in tight spots, you can use a ratchet-to-torque wrench converter that DTS sells. I've tested it, too. It's just as accurate, and being that no one makes a flex-head torque wrench, with this tool and a flex-head ratchet you got one.
