Suitable for a range of industries including rail, transport, structural engineering, mining, petrochemical and offshore, the world-patented RotaBolt Vision was the latest development in the RotaBolt range, said John Humphreys, managing director of Australian distributor James Walker. It gave a constant and accurate tension measurement, and was easy to fit and monitor.
“The visibility is a big attraction – you can see it from the ground. That’s the main feature of it, and not having to check it, you don’t have to put a spanner on the bolt to see if it’s tight,” he said.
The new bolts operate on the same internal air-gap technology as the original RotaBolt, but unlike its predecessor which requires the operator to “finger check” a special cap on the head of the bolt, the RotaBolt Vision has a specially developed visual indicator that appears as an unbroken yellow line across the bolt head.
As soon as tension is lost across the bolt, the indicator instantly rotates 90 degrees to show a distinct right angle break in the yellow line. The indicator can be seen up to 25m away, and for difficult locations the joints can be easily checked by binoculars.
The safety and maintenance cost benefits could be easily measured, said Rod Corbett, managing director of RotaBolt. “Being able to guarantee the integrity and safety of bolted joints can be a costly and time consuming operation,” he said.
“Not only does it bring savings in maintenance costs, in many applications it can be a lifesaver too. The potential for this new safety bolt is enormous.”
