TEST FIXTURE DESIGN SERVICES

Worldwide engineering teams seeking to eliminate the costs associated with high defect rates in test-intensive assembly and test operations and wasted engineering efforts–often over the course of weeks or months–to re-engineer production systems to meet minimal gage R&R standards can now enlist the services of InterTech Development Company's Applications Laboratory for test fixture design services.

Jacques Hoffmann, president and founder of InterTech Development Company, explains that this stepped up effort to address inadequacies in fixture design is in response to the widespread misconception that high-precision leak detectors and other test instrumentation can work without comparable attention to high-precision fixturing.

Hoffmann comments, "A classic example I found was in an automotive plant I recently visited to help them design a turnkey leak testing solution for a fuel injection component that needed to achieve very low leak standards — 0.03 sccm– at very high pressures–3000 psi. They had specialized leak detectors in place that they thought would suffice for their application, but the problem was in the test fixture design, which had the 15 micron Ra that is common. They did not know that the added expense for a near mirror finish fixture (2L lapped finish) was absolutely essential to prevent seal creep.

"But these superior leak detectors did not deliver the type of consistent test results they had expected. Why? The 16 micron Ra of the test fixtures was nowhere near as precise as the real world requirements. Very precise featuring to tolerances of 10 microns or less was needed. The 2L lapped finish that fixed their problems did cost more. High-precision fixturing always does, but you pay for better fixtures to keep the expense of quality problems and not achieving gage R&R out of the equation."

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