The Testing Times

A problem one customer was trying to eliminate was the potential of electrical connectors separating in their application which could be in highly inaccessible areas. In this application, the connectors are being used to supply power to sensors used to determine the presence of oil in drilled wells in the sea bed or deep in the desert. This test attempts to simulate what the sensors could be subjected to by rotating the power connector by +/- 100 degrees and repeating this cycle 2000 times. The solution our engineering design team came up with is one of our 5kN test frames, a customized jig to hold the specimen and a mechanical fixture that rotates the specimen 100 degrees as the crosshead is raised; the machine and fixtures are connected to a pc running our Horizon software that controls the test frame and monitors the data coming from it. As for the final result, operator looks for any visual wear in the connector.

Another new innovative testing system has been released by our engineering design teams working with medical industry professional who want to perform tensile tests on a range of materials for producing Synthetic Skin. This new accessory is a vertically mounted, temperature controlled, fluid bath that becomes a saline tank. This particular application used with a Tinius Olsen 5KT single column testing machine and a pair of medical grade 50N capacity vice grips that keeps the specimens in a saline solution while the tensile test is performed. The bath is filled from a reservoir tank and the system has multiple sensors to control the filling of bath and temperature of the Saline Solution . What makes this test fixture unique is that it allows tensile tests to be performed on specimens that are underwater, with no change to the testing machine.

Tinius Olsen is proud to now offer side loading hydraulic wedge grips for use with our Super L, U Series, Electomatic, and LoCap series of testers. These new grips feature a variety of optional wedge faces/grips and require their own hydraulic power pack for operation. Time tested and well proven in the field, these grips are a popular addition to Tinius Olsen's grip offering and are available in rated capacities of either 120kN or 300kN. To learn more about these grips, see the datasheet/specification sheet on our corporate website.