Saw a torque wrench the other day with scales which confused me. It's a micrometer adjustment type, and looks to have been made for the German market. The scales, one either side, are marked:-
m. | N. ---------- | - 112 98 - | * * * | - 30 16 - |
M. | KPS. ---------- | - 11.4 10.0 - | * * * | - 3.0 1.6 - |
Asterisks are just other inbetween markings.
There is an instruction leaflet with it - but it shows totally different markings and talks about how to set it to 504 in-lbs. ;-)
The top scale is Newton metres. The bottom one is 9.8 times smaller and therefore clearly Kilogram metres which I suggest must actually read KGS not KPS.
KPS scale is for nuts.
Right. I assumed the top one was since it has the sort of spread you'd expect for Nm - but wondered why it was marked mN?
The other one is definitely engraved KPS - which might explain why I couldn't find any information on it. ;-) Was obviously a 'second'.
Google normally answers everything pretty quickly but entering "torque kps" and a number of other variants got me nowhere other than this thread and a few other things of no great use. Anyway I finally cracked it after about 30 minutes of searching.
KPS apparently stands for Kiloponds which is another name for Kilogram-force and to distinguish it from kilogram weight although most people would hardly have any real need to differentiate those. If it stumped me as an engineer for 30 years I doubt if many would know what KPS was and god knows why torque wrench manufacturers think they have to use it rather than Kg or Kgf which are both pretty clear.
As for mN instead of Nm it's certainly also very unusual although as torque is force x distance technically it makes no difference which way round you write them. IME people always say Newton metres although it's common to hear both foot pounds and pound feet. I always say foot pounds although I suppose along the lines of Nm one really ought to use the unit of force first and distance second.
Anyway it was an interesting puzzle.
I'm wondering if since it appeared to be made for the German market by the box lable it could be the way they marked things there? But the instruction leaflet - single page - was German and French on one side, English only on the other. Not what you'd expect if made to sell in Germany. The 'German' part shows the scale as is, the English a different one only in 'inch pounds'. But for car stuff I've never seen this used unless for a very low torque - it's always ft lbs.
But thanks for the research. I was hoping it was a misprint and therefore priceless like some stamps. ;-)
Probably made in China and nobody noticed which way round the latters had been stamped.
S
I take it you didn't read Dave's explanation?
We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "Dave Plowman (News)" saying something like:
I have an ex-aircraft works Snap-On WW2 dial torque lever in inch pounds. Never really found much use for it, but it's a nice bit of kit.
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