Manual Torque Data Study
At the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, TX, Production Technicians (PTs) build and disassemble nuclear weapon systems. The weapons are held in an integrated work stand for stability and to increase the safety environment for the workers and for the materials being processed. There are many occasions in which a knob must be turned to tighten an assembly part. This can help to secure or manipulate pieces of the system. As there are so many knobs to turn, the instructions given to the PTs are to twist the knob to a hand-tight setting, without the aid of a torque wrench. There are inherent risks in this procedure as the knobs can be tightened too loosely such that the apparatus falls apart or too tightly such that the force can crush or pinch components in the system that contain energetic materials. We want to study these operations at Pantex. Our goal is to collect torque data to assess the safety and reliability of humantooling interfaces.