FAQ - Services for industrial tools and assembly solutions

We would not advise it. A poor installation leads to increased costs, reduced productivity, and lower quality. Having the support of an experienced and certified Atlas Copco technician ensures fast and professional problem-solving. As a result, some of the most common problems during installation can be avoided, giving you peace of mind.

The first thing to consider is the tool’s journey from the manufacturing plant to you. It's hard to know what might have happened to the tool during transportation. Sometimes, the tool can be stored for some time before being shipped.

The second thing is that there is no international standard for tool calibration. Depending on your country and industry, there are different calibration standards.

Therefore, an accredited partner must calibrate your new high-precision power tools from day one. This process will ensure you get the most out of them and gain full control of your production quality.  

This is why day-1 calibration is an essential part of our installation service.

All of them. We are in the business of handheld tools, and the operator's safety is always our priority.  

We can reduce safety risks by ensuring that professional certified technicians perform the installation safely, regardless of whether the tools are electric, pneumatic, or hydraulic.  

Many other risks are always present when humans and machines interact, such as reaction forces, pinch points, and accessories like sockets and grinding discs. Therefore, our installation training is necessary to ensure operator safety.

We have EasyStart, our installation services for both tools and software products.

The standard EasyStart package for tools includes calibration, joint tightening results check, and operator training. Moreover, we configure the software interfaces and ensure the connectivity of peripherals. You can customize the standard EasyStart package by adding advanced tightening strategies, additional program sets, accessories, and physical controller setups.

The standard EasyStart package for software products includes installation, base configuration, and testing of functionalities and interfaces. In addition, we offer certified user training and a backup of all work done.

Preventive Maintenance is any preventive action performed on the tool or joining equipment, which generally includes replacing wear parts or lubrication - for example, using the Maintenance Kit. After Preventive Maintenance, a test must be performed. If we are working with an Assembly tool, calibration is also required. To perform tests and calibrations, you will need a workshop with hand tools, specific equipment, and expert technicians. 

A Tool Management Center (TMC) is part of our Uptime service level agreement. It's Atlas Copco's unique service model where our personnel are based in the customer’s facilities, on fixed schedules, within a designated space. In this space, they are equipped with all the necessary tools to repair or maintain Atlas Copco tools or other brands of tightening tools, removal tools, percussive tools, hoists, etc., as well as to manage the installed base.

At a Tool Management Center, our certified service technicians and engineers perform specific Preventive Maintenance and Calibrations. They take responsibility for Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM), Line Support, Setups, and ISO Document Management. We aim for lower TATs (Turn Around Times) to increase customer productivity.

Software needs several types of maintenance. It may be just a routine task since bugs are discovered by some users, or it may be a significant event. The following are some types of maintenance based on their purposes:

• Corrective Maintenance to correct or fix problems discovered by users or by user error reports.
• Adaptive maintenance to keep the software product up-to-date and adapted to the ever-changing world of technology and business.
• Perfective Maintenance to keep the software relevant over a long time. It provides new features and meets new user requirements for refining the software and improving reliability and performance.
• Preventive Maintenance to prevent future problems. It aims to attend to problems that are not significant now but may cause severe issues in the future.

TechCover software maintenance contracts from Atlas Copco include all the above and more! Not only ensuring the health and availability of your software but also helping the users get the most from it through regular trainings, change management assistance and general application support.

The lifecycle of your software does not start when coding starts and end with the product launch. Instead, it is an ongoing lifecycle that allows the software to evolve and deliver more value through development and maintenance.

Technology is rapidly changing and software, if it is being used, must be updated, and maintained properly.

Software maintenance contracts provided by professional software suppliers offer peace-of-mind protection by keeping you covered for compatibility issues, bugs, and other software problems.

In terms of costs, proactive software maintenance contracts enable you to gain control over your software maintenance budget. If you are covered for software issues and receive regular updates, your overall IT expenditures will be reduced to a planned yearly maintenance fee. This eliminates unexpected repair costs and of course, production downtime costs caused by software issues. 

TechCover Health Check is the backbone of the maintenance contract. Health Check software runs next to your software product, monitoring in real-time the health of the entire system (application, database, host, and network).

Thanks to Health Check, we can deliver proactive services and automatically fix minor issues directly.

Only ISO 17025 accredited providers can perform accredited quality assurance calibrations. The measuring equipment must be traceable to national standards, and measurement uncertainty stated. There are more stringent demands concerning the process, system, training of the technicians, and regularly performed audits. On the other hand, factory quality assurance calibration can be performed by non-accredited providers. This is often a simplified testing procedure, not necessarily traceable and based on national/international standards, and it does not include measurement uncertainties. 

In calibration, traceability describes a process where the tool is calibrated by more accurate equipment according to a national standard. In fact, the national lab calibrates the measurement equipment to ensure an even higher accuracy than the tool. This chain of events provides us with what we define as “traceability” of our results. 

When considering calibration, you need to be sure that your tools and measuring equipment are in good hands. ISO/IEC 17025 is a standard defining competence for lab and field calibrations, and it is the core requirement to become an accredited calibration provider. Several OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) use the automotive quality management standard IATF 16949 - International Automotive Task Force. It defines requirements for automotive industry suppliers, stating that calibration must be performed by an accredited lab.  

ISO 5393 is an extensive performance test method for power tools, and the Machine Capability Test follows selected parts of this extensive standard. German OEMs developed a new Machine Capability Test standard, VDI/VDE 2645–2, that can define a certification by either certifying the entire tool or certifying the tool for a particular application only. Moreover, this norm covers not only torque but also angle calibration. 

ISO 6789 is an accredited calibration for wrenches covering electronic, dual, and click wrenches. EURAMET/cg-14 is today the only widespread standard for accredited calibration of torque transducers for Quality Control. Most markets apply national standards for accredited Quality Assurance calibrations based on this procedure. Also worth mentioning is VDI/VDE 2648 for angle calibration of quality assurance equipment: this standard is used globally due to the lack of international standards. 

Based upon the international guideline from ILAC (International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation), the calibration interval depends on several factors, including frequency of usage, required accuracy, and the internal quality requirements of your company. The customer’s quality management system should define the calibration interval, such as ISO9001. However, if there is no quality or regulatory requirement, we recommend calibration every 12 months for tools and measuring equipment. In many safety-critical or medical applications, the guidelines require an interval of 3 to 6 months.

Calibration is included in our preventive maintenance programs, namely ToolCover.

Joint integrity means that a joint can be tightened to the engineering specification with a proper tightening process. This process can include correct clamp load, tightening torque, stable process, and failure detection method.

With Tightening Development, the comprehensive analysis of clamp load, torque, and angle will provide you with the most critical factors of the real-time tightening process, allowing you to compare the tightening result with your engineering design.  

Tightening Quality is the optimal solution if you have problems with specific joints. We measure the clamp load, torque, and the whole progression of the joint, including snug level, elastic, plastic area, and yield point. All the above is necessary to define the issue and provide a sufficient target torque specification or tightening process. If Tightening Technique cannot solve the problem, we highlight improvements in your design.  

Today we mainly offer classroom training, especially around Tightening Technique. Other types of classroom training, such as operator training, are also available in selected markets. We use our North American market to test new e-learnings on Tightening Technique that we hope will give high customer value so that we can soon introduce them into other markets. 

We offer Tightening Technique courses at different levels: Basic, Advanced, and Expert. The Basic version is available in most markets, while the Advanced and Expert are available in selected markets. Moreover, we can tailor the classroom training for the group of participants. We aim to develop more training for people from specific functions in our customers' facilities, such as production, R&D, quality, etc. 

Anything from half a day up to 2-3 days depending on customer requests and category of participants. This training is often a mix of theoretical and practical sections.

Industrial norms like ISO 21368 specify the requirements for the quality-appropriate execution of bonded joints and the general organizational and reporting procedures for professional production, both in workshops and onsite. It includes maintaining quality standards in fabrication, keeping records, and enabling complete documentation.

Preventive maintenance, process optimization, training, data traceability, and regular analysis are essential to ensure the continuous quality of your bonded joints.

• Data traceability and parameter monitoring deliver proof of functionality of the automated production process.
• Regular preventive maintenance ensures your equipment's functionality, directly impacting the continuous quality of your application.
• Our training offer prepares the bonding personnel to fulfill their professional responsibility.
• Continuous process optimization ensures you can meet all previous requirements for bonded joints.

• Data that can improve productivity and quality
• Data that can support continuous improvements
• Data that can detect critical quality issues, indications leading to downtime or extensive reworking
  

Manufacturers have always tried to collect valuable production data by timing jobs and visual inspections. Today we can rely on smart integrated devices to produce information automatically and support data collection.  

However, it's essential to utilize production data correctly to improve overall productivity and quality. Learn how we can help!

ALTURE®, our data-driven service, is a cloud-based solution. We have chosen the cloud for three main reasons.

• To embrace the best algorithms and well-trained machine learning
• To eliminate the limitation of computing power
• To enable remote resolution of issues

In addition, having data on the cloud will minimize additional work for the customers’ IT Departments. Modern cloud providers ensure data stay close to the customers, supporting low latency and national data legislation.

No, but you need to be sure to meet your IT requirements.

We strive for security and strictly follow industry security standards, such as SOC-2 and ISO27001.

We use MS Azure as a data center, providing a high-security level. For us, it is crucial that the customer’s IT department approves our setup and feels trust that we manage the information. Therefore, we only use reliable connectivity technologies endorsed by many customers' IT professionals.

The customer only shares relevant information for optimizing the production processes and maintenance of the tools. Any data outside this scope is filtered before it is sent to the cloud service.

While using ALTURE®, our customers have full control of access. Users log in with their company account, ensuring their company's authentication requirements are met and making it user-friendly.