Our state-of-the-art Metrology Calibration Laboratory demonstrates our commitment to innovation in measurement and calibration.

We know how important it is for our customers to use accurate and reliable metrology equipment within their processes. Within our UKAS accredited lab we’ve invested in temperature and humidity controls, as well as a range of advanced testing equipment to enable us to provide highly accurate calibrations on a wide range of metrology devices, including dimensional, pressure, torque, electrical and temperature equipment.

Keeping you compliant

Our lab’s central location in Birmingham means we’re able to provide an industry-leading guaranteed 5-day turnaround, to minimise downtime within your operations.

While our unique customer portal, the Calibration Hub, aims to simplify the calibration process, by providing instant access to calibration certificates, and sending automated reminders when an item is due for re-calibration.

You might already know that the incredibly popular potato crisp was invented accidentally – as a form of revenge. At the Moon’s Lake House in New York, in 1853, Cornelius Vanderbilt sent his French fries back to the kitchen for being too thick. In an act of outrage, George Crum, the chef, prepared them again as thin and hard as possible. Proving in one that: a) revenge is sometimes best served sliced, and b) measurements matter. So the legend goes.

Of course, when it comes to food quality, subjective and objective testing are both important. Whilst the former evaluates products based on sensory tests, such as taste and smell, the latter focuses on aspects that can be measured, recorded and analysed with a reliable instrument. This is where calibration makes its entrée…

Today nations all over the world know and love potato crisps for their specific flavours and texture. This all relies on the constant recording of key measures during the production process, i.e., of moisture, slice thickness, and temperature.

Calibration is what allows for the accurate, repeatable and traceable nature of these measurements – thus ensuring quality. Today food and drink manufacturers are also governed by strict standards to ensure the production process is safe. Their reputation, name – as well as time and energy spent – all hang on the line.

When it comes to the crunch (sorry!) calibration is a vital part of every food manufacturer’s quality and safety programme. Here’s what you need to know…

The purpose of calibration

Safety and quality are paramount – particularly when it comes to food and beverage production, one of the most heavily regulated industries in the UK, and subject to more stringent legislation than most sectors.

Calibration has a huge part to pay in ensuring safety and quality as without instruments that are properly calibrated, the reliability and accuracy of their measurements cannot be relied upon.

Quality through quantity

Let’s take crisp manufacturing for example. Texture and colour are key measures of crisp quality – and both are dependent on frying oil temperature. At around 160°C a chemical reaction called the “Maillard Reaction” occurs – giving the salty snack its distinctive golden colour. In fact, it’s been found that every degree above 162°C adds significant colour.[1] This means that, to create a quality product, the frying and exit temperature need to be absolutely precise, meaning that the instrument used to measure fryer performance needs to be reliable. How do you ensure this?

You guessed it: calibration.

Similarly, weighing systems will need to weigh and dispense the correct weight of crisps into each packet, while your check weighers will need to quality check the final product to make sure it’s the correct weight displayed on the packaging. To ensure their readings are accurate, the load cells for both devices need to be properly calibrated. If the first weighing system is calibrated incorrectly, when the product reaches the check weigher it will result in a high level of rejects, equally a high level of waste.

Preventing safety risks

Secondly, the manufacturing of food and drink has a direct impact on public health and safety. Carrying out regular calibrations means manufacturers can be confident in the safety of their product, helping to avoid costly recalls or even legal action due to ‘bad batches’ and reprocessing, all of which could result in reputational damage to a business.

Temperature control is absolutely essential to ensure the production of safe food, for instance. Using a piece of equipment that has not been calibrated could lead to a critical food temperature being measured incorrectly. This is particularly important given bacteria are able to grow in the ‘Danger Zone’ between 8°C and 60°C. By storing food at the correct temperatures, manufacturers can greatly reduce the risk of microbiological contamination and thus reduce the risks of harm to consumers.

The importance of regular calibration

But remember: over time, there is a tendency for results and accuracy to ‘drift’ when using a particular piece of equipment or measuring parameters such as temperature and weight.

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) is responsible for food safety and food hygiene in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. It works with local authorities to enforce food safety regulations and check the standards are being met, including accurate instrument calibration.

This includes a range of measuring equipment, including pressure, flow, level and temperature instruments; as well as metal detection and alarm systems; and industrial weighing systems.

We hope this gives you plenty of food for thought! But if you still have any questions or would like to learn more about our calibration services, please get in touch – we’d love to hear from you!

Calibration Select specialises in providing a comprehensive range of metrology calibration services. All calibrations are expertly performed to exacting standards for accuracy, reliability, and traceability. Our calibration laboratory is accredited by UKAS to ISO/IEC 17025:2017.

The automotive industry is one of the world’s largest manufacturing sectors, with some 70 million motor vehicles produced worldwide annually. Today vehicles are becoming more complex, with more technology and electric parts involved than ever before. From the era of horseless carriages, we now live in a world where a prototype convertible ‘flying car’ just completed its first test flight. Where there’s a will, there’s a runway.

But before getting the ‘green light’ to appear on the market, motor vehicles, and their components, have to comply with a certain number of regulations, whether local or international.

The importance of calibration within the automotive industry

Quality control is an essential part of manufacturing because it ensures that all products conform to the same standard. It means manufacturers are less likely to face costly recalls and put customers at risk from poorly made products.

For the manufacturing industry, which relies on high end manufacturing and precision, it is an especially vital aspect. But automotive quality control also relies on having accurate tools for the job.

Enter: calibrations.

Calibrations ensure the metrology equipment used to provide measurements within the automotive (or any other) industry, is accurate and provides reliable results.

Choosing the right calibration provider is essential, but not always easy. Luckily, we’ve taken care to ensure you don’t encounter any speed bumps on the way…

Here are the 3 key things automotive manufacturers need to remember when it comes to their metrology equipment calibrations:

1. The road to least resistance is… getting it right

From torque wrenches to tyre pressure gauges, and micrometres to vernier calipers, dial test indicators and pressure gauges, the various types of measurement equipment used in automotive manufacturing all have one thing in common – they need to be accurate.

Every fastener within a vehicle, for example, has a torque specification assigned by the manufacturer. Too much torque can cause severely over-tightened fasteners, leading to stripping and broken parts. Too little torque can result in pieces separating or becoming loose. A calibrated torque wrench ensures the correct amount of torque is applied, which is vital to ensure overall vehicle safety.

Similarly, with vernier calipers used to measure small parts, calibration is crucial as even the slightest deviation can have an impact further down the production line. Calibration determines any measurement deviations in the instruments and allows any necessary adjustments to be carried out. When it comes to accuracy, it ensures you get it right.

2. Routine calibration is your best path to success

Most of us make sure to check our car tyre pressure regularly (or at least know that we should…) to ensure the safety of our vehicles (car tyres will generally lose up to two pounds of air per month!). In the same way, when using measuring instruments regularly, they also need to be calibrated regularly. This ensures they continue to meet industry-wide standards during the manufacturing process.

The accuracy of measuring instruments will degrade over time from frequent usage and general wear and tear. How often you need to calibrate your metrology equipment depends on the type, how often it’s used and the operating environment.

Standard practice is to calibrate torque wrenches every 5,000 cycles or every 12 months. Similarly, it’s important to calibrate your calipers and gauges at least annually. Having consistent high-accuracy measurements means you can ensure high-quality output, saving you on costs in the long run.

3. Map out your requirements… to ensure you arrive at the right destination

We all know that choosing the right car is an important decision, which is why car buyers take an average of 40.5 days to find the right one! Similarly, with so much information available, it’s important to make sure you understand exactly which standard and type of calibration is right for you.

When it comes to industries such as automotive and aerospace, traceability is very important. In fact, most formal ISO quality management standards will demand traceable calibration certificates. For these industries, where safety is absolutely critical, UKAS accredited calibrations can provide an added level of trust. This is because an accredited calibration laboratory has to be independently audited, therefore can give you the best indication of the quality of a supplier’s calibration services.

Mapping out your requirements is key to finding the best-equipped lab for your calibration needs. Alongside costs and turnaround time, many manufacturers will also need to consider the benefits of having a single supplier looking after all their calibration requirements. While for some, finding an ISO 17025 accredited calibration laboratory that offers onsite calibration services can be a huge convenience.

Finding yourself at a crossroads?…

Calibration Select provides a comprehensive metrology equipment calibration service for the automotive industry. Our team can provide expert calibrations on-site as well as at our calibration lab, which is accredited by UKAS to ISO/IEC 17025:2017.

To learn more about our calibration services for the automotive industry, click here to get in touch. We’d love to hear from you!

Each instrument should have a unique calibration record which must be maintained for a certain period of time. How often equipment needs to be calibrated will depend on the type of equipment, how often it’s used and its unique conditions, for example, being exposed to high, or low, temperatures.

It’s safe to say, as humans we have always been fascinated by the intricacies of flight.

In 1678, a French locksmith named Besnier tried to fly with wings modelled after the webbed feet of a duck. Luckily, he survived the attempt. And 300 years before that, kites were seen carrying humans in China. Luckily, we have come a long way since then…

During the last century the aerospace industry celebrated a number of milestones. From the Wright brothers achieving the first successful airplane flight in 1903, to the Vostok capsule carrying the first person into space.

But not one to rest on its laurels the industry is constantly developing new technologies, and today the prospect of potentially moving to Mars isn’t too alien a concept(!), while the emergence of new advanced materials like graphene and carbon nanotubes are helping to make airplane wings more efficient by reducing weight and fuel consumption.

Weight is hugely important when it comes to designing air and spacecraft. Lighter machines can travel faster on less fuel, and even the slightest changes can make a huge difference. Weight and balance also have a significant impact on the ability to operate aircrafts safely.

So, fasten your seatbelts as we journey into why this makes the calibration of measuring equipment highly critical…

First stop: Quality and safety

The aerospace industry is subject to strictly tight quality controls for safety, meaning high quality production is needed at every stage.

Equipment or component failures on an aircraft can cost from tens of thousands to millions of pounds, while failures in flight present another enormous risk in the loss of lives.

To guarantee the structural safety of an aircraft, every element needs to be manufactured to the highest quality. This is particularly important as the industry relies on hundreds of tiny parts to build their products using high precision processes.

Dimensional measurement plays a crucial role in ensuring that these parts, including aircraft frames and stringers, meet exacting quality standards.

Without proper, regular and well-documented instrument calibration, there is simply no way to ensure safety, quality and performance – all of which are critical to the aerospace industry.

Accuracy and precision

High value satellites are launched with the requirement that they can operate for a number of decades without maintenance or repair. This makes it incredibly important to get it right the first time. But this can only be delivered through rigorous testing and validation carried out on every single component, ensuring it can survive the extremely harsh space environment.

Measurement lies at the heart of this.

In September of 1999, after almost 10 months of travel to Mars, NASA’s $125million Mars Climate Orbiter burned and broke into pieces – purely because the wrong type of measurement unit was used during the manufacturing process. Thankfully today we have the globally recognised SI units system of measurement to avoid such incidences…

Besides checking the accuracy of metrology equipment, calibration also helps to determine the traceability of the measurement.

During calibration, equipment such as micrometers, gauges and calipers are tested against an even higher-level standard, which ensures the results the tools provide are correct, and parts can be produced to the right specs.

Calibration is not a one-time mission

Calibrations have to be carried out at regular intervals. The accuracy of all measuring devices degrades over time, and calibration processes ensure that any deviations in measurement can be corrected so the device performs consistently.  

The aerospace industry in particular has specialised accuracy and reliability specifications for its equipment, and all measurement data and results need to incite an extreme level of confidence.

This means manufacturers need to employ a metrology system that can measure equipment efficiently while consistently attaining high levels of accuracy, which can be as tight as 0.01 mm.

Regular calibration ensures that equipment maintains its stated accuracy, minimising safety risks and bringing you one giant step towards better quality.

Talk to us

Our Calibration Select laboratory in Birmingham follows strict standards and processes which enable us to carry out metrology equipment calibrations for the aerospace industry.

We offer our customers the choice of either traceable or UKAS calibrations. If you want to find out which option is right for you, or if you’d like to know more about the calibration of your metrology equipment our experts are on hand to offer some friendly advice. We’d love to hear from you!