In the days of Thomas Edison, an inventor simply tried a number of things until something seemed to work. This approach doesn’t work as well today. Litigation and the demand for ever improving reliability require that we subject our ideas to rigorous laboratory testing. Here are some of the ways that can happen.
Burst Pressure Testing
When assessing the design of a system that will be under pressure, the burst pressure test is a way of ensuring that the system will withstand an operating pressure well in excess of the pressure at which you’re planning to operate. Perhaps as importantly, the burst pressure test will tell you how the system will fail if pressure is exceeded.
Coating Inspection
If part of your production process involves putting a coating on a product, such as paint or galvanizing, coating inspection and testing will help ensure that this coating is consistent. In the manufacturing plant itself, coatings may need to be inspected to ensure they are not deteriorating. Like burst pressure testing, coating inspection can be a destructive process, so typically a random sample is taken from the production environment for testing.
Contamination Testing
If your product or process requires a certain degree of purity, contamination can be a difficult issue to trace down. Especially for food-grade operations, ensuring that a product is free from contaminants is crucial. Contamination testing is done in a systematic way to track down where in a process a contaminant has a chance to enter. Any potential area for contamination needs to be redesigned to eliminate that possibility.
Raw Materials Testing
Since a product can only be as good as the components it’s made of, raw materials testing is a vital part of maintaining quality. Incoming raw materials must be tested routinely for purity and quality.
Inventing and manufacturing systems of today have to be systematic and thorough. Quality control and testing ensures that bad product doesn’t get through.