Living up to Taiwan's reputation of “Kingdom of Hand Tools,” local suppliers of auto repair tools are earning plaudits for their long-term dedication to R&D and branding upgrades.
Unwilling to compromise in the face of rivalry from emerging countries and realizing the danger of market erosion caused by price competition, most Taiwanese suppliers in the line have worked to redefine their positioning in an upmarket direction.
One supplier said that it was once common to see Taiwan-made products derided in foreign movies and in real life as having poor quality, but Taiwanese suppliers have worked hard to correct that misconception and are now proud of the “made-in-Taiwan” label.
Taiwan's First Semi-powered Digital Torque Wrench One maker has gone further than to diversify from manual hand tools into power tools: William Tools Co., Ltd., founded in 1999 in Taichung County, central Taiwan, has developed the prototype of Taiwan's first “semi-powered digital torque wrench” in cooperation with the ITRI (Industrial Technology Research Institute) and a Taiwanese peer this year to turn a new page in the local industry.
Initially a maker of torque tools, the company has also developed a series of ratchet wrench handles, torque multi-pliers and torque wrenches. The company's hand tools are available in standard or customized specifications, with torque rating and durability complying with or even exceeding ANSI and DIN standards. With maximum output of over 2 million units a year, the company is well-known as a torque wrench expert among professional buyers from the U.S., Japan and European countries.
Few can question the company's status as a world-caliber torque wrench maker for its products are supplied on the ODM (original design manufacturing) basis to a couple of global tool brands, including Stanley and Facom, as well as exclusively supplying metal parts for Eclatorq's digital torque wrenches (Eclatorq is Taiwan's largest brand of digital tools).
Showing the prototype semi-powered wrench, company president William Chiang says, “I understand that the world's first powered torque wrench was invented in Japan; powered digital torque wrenches were developed by British and Japanese companies. However, ours is the first semi-powered digital wrench in the world.”
Based on ITRI's experimental results, Chiang's R&D team found that a powered wrench has torque fluctuation as high as 30%, mainly because torque is almost impossible to control precisely by electrical motors. “So we decide to build a less powerful motor into our digital torque wrench to optimally balance efficiency and torque precision,” says Chiang, noting that the electrical motor generates torque up to 50n/m, with the tool able to torque up to 200n/m manually.
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