The Testing Times

Two needs in any materials testing lab - Productivity and Safety – cannot compromise either! Solution for a tension/compression materials testing machine – A light curtain, if the operator reaches into the testing zone towards the moving parts – INSTANTLY the testing machine and application of load is stopped and requires a reset to continue. Yet no door or shield to open means a marginal gain every test day in day out and that adds up to a significant cumulative productivity gain over a year. Spec ….. 1.       Light curtain transmission and receiving devices are TO slot mounted with a robust housing to resist damage 2.       Uses safe infrared LED’s 3.       Range up to 15m 4.       Lights show status, green not obstructed, red when the beam is broken 5.       Sizes of objects that cannot pass through undetected; a.    ...

Tinius Olsen plays a crucial role in ensuring safety-critical fasteners for wind turbines reach the marketplace at the highest quality possible. Global manufacturers Cooper & Turner, who have established operations in the UK, China and USA, have been a vital part of the renewable energy industry for over two decades, producing bolts and fixings for the entire wind turbine structure. This includes towers in some remote and challenging environments, such as offshore wind farms. “We started servicing the wind turbine market more than 25 years ago, long before it became an integral part of the global energy supply,” says David Briggs, Head of Global Quality and Technical Information at the Cooper and Turner Group.  “The manufacture and provision of high quality, safety-critical fasteners, with the ability to operate in some of the most hostile environments in the world, has gained us an unrivalled reputation in the wind turbine marketplace.” Quality control a...

Shawn Byrd, Technical Manager at Tinius Olsen, takes a look at the revolution in the world of extensometry with the increasing use of video extensometers, their applications, operation and features. Shawn's primary focus at Tinius Olsen is on materials testing and the application of various standards to different testing platforms that help evaluate materials and products.  He is a member of ASTM Committees C09 on Concrete and Concrete Aggregates, D30 on Composite Materials, E28 on Mechanical Testing, and F16 on Fasteners. Involved with independent testing labs in the United States, China, India, and Singapore, he has also completed numerous Nadcap, American Association for Laboratory Accreditation, and ISO audits. Video Extensometry Improvements in both video technology and computer software has a new generation of non-contact extensometers coming to the fore; the video extensometer.  Video extensometers have many advantages. They give users grea...

Tinius Olsen has helped one of the leading Technical Colleges in America, the Cincinnati State Technical and Community College, to up-grade and further develop its materials testing laboratory.  This is the culmination of a partnership between the two organisations that goes back to the establishment of the College in 1969, as Mike DeVore, Professor & Program Chair of the Mechanical Engineering Technology & Welding Technology Dept explains: “I started teaching at Cincinnati State 29 years ago and at that time we had a very old Tinius Olsen tensile test machine that still worked extremely well on a day to day basis.”    “Our testing lab had been in operation since almost the establishment of the school so we decided to update our lab in 1993 and, due to the reliability and generally good history that we had with the old machine, I decided to purchase another from Tinius Olsen.”  “I visited the factory in Pennsylvania and was very impre...

Successful manufacturing relies on quality and productivity. Testing machines are  used to demonstrate the quality of raw materials such as steel alloys, composites, plastics and rubber as well as components including medical devices, packaging materials and fasteners. Manufacturing processes today are typically automated to a greater or lesser extent, although the quality process is often manual. This is generally time consuming, involving entering reference data, performing test  procedures, reporting on the results, preparing the testing machine, starting the test, qualifying and accepting the results and appending comments before removing the materials.  Historically, materials testing has been an operator using single or multiple stations. This can be uneconomical in terms of operator time where speed is  crucial – for example in testing threaded fasteners for the aerospace industry, testing is required 24 hours a day.  Dr...