The Testing Times

Plastic bottles have found increasingly wide application in the food and beverage industries nowadays, with plastic bottles in all shapes and sizes for soft drinks, juices and water found everywhere in our daily life. Along with their wider application and acceptance are more, and stricter, requirements for quality and safety control and testing. One such test is the p ull-off strength of plastic bottle caps where the force required to pull the bottle cap off the bottle is routinely checked and monitored by manufacturers. These manufacturers commonly use a Tinius Olsen tensile tester to take these measurements. In these cases, Tinius Olsen recommends the use of the grip attachment model S540, which comprises of two parts; the lower bottle cap holder and the upper cap “Pull off” attachment. Operators simply insert the cap in the lower attachment, lower the upper attachment onto the cap and start the tensile test; at the end of the test, the testing machine reports the “Pull Off forc

Tinius Olsen engineers have continued their efforts to help the dental industry with another innovative grip design, this time it is a small 3 point bend test attachment used for filling materials. In this test, the specimen is supported on two lower points of contacts while the flexural, or bending, force is applied by the third, upper, point of contact. This is Tinius Olsen attachment part no. 360-001 and is typically used with a Tinius Olsen electromechanical tension / compression testing machine & is compliant with ISO 4049:2000 Key specifications of the attachments are: The lower two points of contact have a span of 20mm. Each point of contact (upper and lower) is   comprise of a 2mm diameter roller. Typical maximum forces expected is 1kN (100 kgf/220 lbf).

This High Temperature Extensometer is a rugged strain gauge based extensometer and is designed for strain and elongation measurements in material testing. The extensometer mounts directly to the furnace via a water cooled bracket , while the alpha grade silicon carbide arms contact the sample. The extensometer features quick release water cooling lines, a gauge length setting tool, and full Wheatstone bridge principle of operation which allows it to operate at temperatures of up to 1200 o C

Tinius Olsen makes its mark in the Dental Industry by manufacturing special  test attachments which are used for a variety of tests including the adhesive strength of braces on teeth, the tensile strength of a composite tooth post, to name just a couple.   Other test which can be carried out using the test machine include regular tensile, shear, bond strength (tensile and shear), flex bend, peel, compression and puncture .

Tinius Olsen has developed a new 3 point bend test jig for testing both interlocking and non-interlocking concrete roofing tiles, and associated fittings for roof and wall cladding materials. This new jig addresses several issues, namely: The load supports have a radius of 10mm to 20 mm. The length of the supports are  longer than the width of the sample tile. The upper loading support and the support nearest the tile tail are free to pivot   along their axis to prevent extraneous loading and any off-centered loading. This transverse strength attachment solution from Tinius Olsen can be used with other manufacturers’ testing machines. This new jig is fully compliant with the BS EN 491 standard.

Tinius Olsen Engineers have designed a new custom attachment for testing the bearing strength of plastics. This attachment is used with Tinius Olsen’s  S and/or  T series of benchtop tensile testers and Horizon software to report bearing strength.  The bearing strength test is designed to replicate the loading on plastics sheet, or plastics products, where rivets, bolts or similar fasteners are used to join sections and show the bearing stress versus the deformation of the hole for rivet/bolt etc. The allowable deformation of the hole in the material should be enough so that there is no looseness of the joint.  As the picture shows, the grip includes an LVDT Extensometer that precisely measures the amount of hole deformation. This attachment follows the guidelines of ASTM D953.

TO’s new grip model 161-001 is designed for testing thermoplastic pipes, using dumbbell shaped specimens that are cut from the walls of thick plastics pipes.  The key feature of these grips is that they are able to accommodate the curvature of the specimens taken from the pipe walls. These grips can test a 60mm deep sample complying with ISO6259-3 Type 1 & ISO527-2 Type 1B standards, and are rated at a maximum load of 25kN and have an operating temperature range of -10 to 50 o C

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.