It has been quite a weekend! I have been really pushing to get this plate done, so here is a plate-related video for you all. Only 26 days until the deadline is here and there is still so much to do!
Last week, I invited Tara and Ken over to help me tension the plate reverb. For those of you who aren't familiar with the goal of tensioning a plate, it is generally said that the tighter and more evenly a plate is tensioned, the better the sound (generally speaking). Today, my video tackles the question of "how tight can we tension this damn thing?"
The main obstacle when tightening the plate is that, at a certain tension, the clips that hold the plate to the frame begin to break. You must then replace the broken clip and re-tighten it. The method that we used to determine the maximum tension that the clips could handle was to measure the torque on the nut that it took to break a clip. We would then replace that clip and tighten all 8 bolts to a torque just before this 'breaking-threshold'.
We did this test using a 4" wrench and a fish-scale. By pulling perpendicularly on the wrench, we were able to measure the amount of force on the bolt it took to break a clip at 4". If the meter made it to 5 lbs of force at 4" when the clip broke, our maximum torque was 15 ft-lbs. In our experiment, 15 ft-lbs was the magic number that broke this specific clip.
Sorry we missed the big moment! :(
I should point out that we later found a problem with this method. Although 15ft-lbs was acceptable as a baseline maximum, we found that we couldn't rely on that number. I will explain in the next EMT 140 post... Have a great Monday!
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