Test and Measurement Devices Need to Be Calibrated

Test and measurement devices must be calibrated regularly to ensure they continue to perform their jobs properly.

Safety and compliance with industry standards, such as those enforced by the FDA in the United States, are obvious reasons for keeping test and measurement tools calibrated. However, as technology demands increase, and manufacturing costs go up, higher precision tests and measurements are moving from the calibration laboratory and onto the factory floor.

Test and measurement devices that were manufactured within specifications can deteriorate over time due to age, heat, weathering, corrosion, exposure to electronic surges, accidental damage, and more. Even the best test and measurement instruments can possess manufacturing imperfections, random noise, and long-term drift that can cause measurement errors. These errors, such as being off a few millivolts or degrees, can be propagated to products or processes being tested, with the potential to falsely reject a good unit or result or to falsely accept a bad unit or result.

Ensuring that test and measurement equipment is of sufficient accuracy to verify product or process specifications is necessary to trust and build on the results of scientific experiments, ensure the correct manufacture of goods or products, and conduct fair trade across country borders.

Calibrators Need to Be Calibrated Too

A calibrator can drift or wear from calibration tolerances over time and needs to be calibrated on a regular basis. Usually following the minimum 4:1 ratio rule, calibrators are calibrated regularly by more accurate reference standards. This process continues all the way up the calibration traceability pyramid to the most accurate calibration standards maintained by a National Metrology Institute.

Calibration ROI

Periodic calibration is usually viewed as a smart business investment with a high return on investment (ROI). Calibration eliminates waste in production, such as recalls required by producing things outside of design tolerances. Calibration also helps identify and repair or replace manufacturing system components before they fail, avoiding costly downtime in a factory. Calibration prevents both the hard and soft costs of distributing faulty products to consumers. With calibration, costs go down while safety and quality go up.

It’s important to point out that both the accuracy and cost of calibration normally declines as you move down the calibration pyramid. Lower level accuracies may be needed on a manufacturing floor as opposed to those in a primary lab. ROI is maximized by choosing calibration that matches the accuracy needed.