Hi all, I was cleaning up the system and noticed a few feet of my boxes arent particularly tight in a relative sense, I understand these fixings shouldnt be torqued to 25Nm or something crazy maybe a few Nm.
Does anybody from the naim staff have a torque spec for the bottom bolts and feet bolts of:
ND555
CD555PS
NAC 552 & PSU
NAP 500 & NAPS500?
Also another torque figure I’ve always wanted to know is if Naim ever intended a Torque for the Fraim. I have a lovely torque wrench that can accept open ended spanner heads so I can actually torque things down exactly if I need.
What about the Powerlines?
This has got me thinking about the torque of every thing in the system.
I have had great success previously from things being reset to correct torque.
What make & model is your torque wrench? There are lots of torque screwdrivers on the market, but torque wrenches that accept open spanner heads - at least in the range of values that are useful for hi-fi - are not common.
Hi Cory, I have a few Torque tools, Wera 7460 0.3-1.2Nm Screwdriver, Norbar TTs 6.0 1.2-6.0Nm Screwdriver, Norbar TTi 10-50Nm Wrench with male Spigot, Norbar NorTorque Wrench 1/2” square drive 200 40-200Nm. (mainly for car wheel nuts)
I mainly am using the wera and Norbar screwdrivers for the naim stuff due to low torques, i have found sonically even powerlines sound better torqued to 0.5-0.7Nm.
I was considering using the 10-50 to do up the Fraim as 10-15Nm seems suitable. Others on other threads have mentioned Naim staff guys at shows tightening fraim levels to very tight levels, essentially the max they and their tools allowed. However I assume it would be beneficial to have all your levels at the same torque to match resonance behaviour.
I was advised, by Naim, to tighten Fraim levels as tightly as possible with just your fingers, and then add around 1/8 to 1/4 turn with the supplied tommy bar. It’s most definitely not a case of getting them as tight as you can, which would make the legs chew into the veneer.
Thanks for that. Back in the day I followed the standard advice to tighten everything up as much as possible, but I’ve been getting more satisfactory results with much lower torques, for instance, the drivers on my speakers are done up to between 1.2 and 1.4 Nm.
I would use the wrench mainly for stand spikes, but even 10 Nm seems high as a lower limit. I took a quick look at the Norbar site and they seem to have a good selection, so maybe they’ll have something with a lower range.
Yes they most certainly will, Norbar are incrediby high quality tools, I place them Equal to the likes of Wera. Just holding their tools in your hand tells you its a serious bit of kit.
I am an Ovator user and do up the torques of the drivers to the specified numbers and have found that is where they’re happy, The ovator spike nuts on the front end I find like being just a bit more than finger tight. I for some reason prefer the sound when you do them up a touch more than your target and then loosen by 1/16th a turn sorta thing.
I havent had the chance yet to experiment with the torque of the rear spikes as of now I do it up to 3.6Nm which is the same as some of the leaf spring bolt torques. I want to try get a torque wrenhc that will allow me to have a spanner end and torque in the low number Nm so i can set the 4 fronts to exactly the same torque.
I’ve always found attention to the various aspects of setup worthwhile. It may only be the last 5% or so of sound quality but subjectively it makes all the difference. With torque, part of the incentive is the repeatability: if you change the value up or down, did it improve or disimprove the sound? And so on.
These days I only check the speaker driver screws once a year, if that, but it’s oddly gratifying to get even an eighth of a turn out of them. And, now that I mention it, I realise I’m overdue to do that.
Didn’t realise the importance of torque of feet until few months ago, opened my 52 for 526 boards installation, and the system didn’t sound the same anymore, rigid and dead, boring and like presenting the sound, not music.
Until one day I found it’s hand tight, plus final 1/4 turn with screwdriver, it sounds really good again.
And with exact number it’s even better, thanks for sharing.
Look to the bicycling market. I have a torque wrench made for my bicycles, where most torque settings range from 3-12 Nm at the extremes, but most bike parts spec to 6 Nm. I have an assortment of hex and Torx bits for it.
And FWIW: any one using a torque wrench. When you are done using it be sure to reset the torque setting back to zero everytime. That’s important for maintaining an accurate calibration for as long as possible. Some bike mechanics get lazy about it and their torque wrenches cannot be trusted. That can be an issue when dealing with carbon fiber bike parts that shouldn’t be over-torqued.
I don’t recall where I read it but, according to my notes, I’m supposed to reset my torque screwdriver (Cameron Sturtevant CAL 36/4) to around 1 Nm when putting it away. But because I find it quite difficult to see the exact reading - and because the torques I use are around 1.2 Nm - I’m in the habit of just leaving at the last setting.
Not disagreeing, I just haven’t heard that advice before. I can readily see how being left at larger torques would “tire” the spring.
Also, I’ve never had mine calibrated, so I don’t think of the torque settings I use as absolute values. But if those values are gradually drifting over time, that would be a concern.
Another part of the story is, I put back the phono boards, run-in again for the sake of comparison
To my memories+video clips the difference is there (I got them real tight before)
Any decent torque wrench should be calibrated to a reasonable tolerance from factory. I’ve never heard of having one recalibrated. Resetting it is common knowledge among people who use these tools professionally.
