Quality Control Testing for Manufactured Products
Quality Control Testing for Manufactured Products—For all manufacturers, ensuring the quality of your outgoing products is of the utmost importance, as well as a huge responsibility. Whether you want to ensure product quality before shipping or you’ve already encountered an issue, quality control testing using various materials analysis methods can help identify issues that can impact quality and determine the cause.
Innovatech Labs has more than 25 years of experience in the materials testing industry, working with a wide range of manufacturers to deliver quick and accurate quality control testing results. Below are details on some of the most common quality control testing needs we regularly serve.
Common Applications of Quality Control Testing
Identifying Residual Solvents
From cleaning equipment to engineering pharmaceutical products, solvents are widely used in the manufacturing industry. However, if they’re not properly removed, residual solvents can compromise the quality or safety of a product. To identify residual solvents, gas chromatography mass spectrometry (GC/MS) is often a go-to technique.
Determining the Cause of Product Failures
All products have the potential to fail, and when they do, uncovering the root cause is critical to minimize product downtime and financial losses. At Innovatech Labs, failure analysis is a key quality control testing service for determining whether an ingredient, contaminant or step in the production process caused a product to fail. Using a range of analytical techniques such as Auger electron spectroscopy, GC/MS analysis and FTIR analysis, some of the quality issues we’ve examined include:
• Failed epoxies
• Failed plastic parts
• Head crashes on magnetic disks
• Shorts on printed circuit boards (PCBs)
Identifying Stains and Contaminants
Stains or contaminants left behind from the production process can negatively impact product quality, safety and product function. To identify stains or contaminants, or ensure overall product cleanliness, a range of materials testing techniques can be used including: FTIR analysis, GC/MS analysis, liquid particle counting (LPC) and ion chromatography. Some examples of our work include:
• Identifying residual chlorine on medical devices
• Identifying a contaminant on a polyethylene surface
• Identifying a haze on a polyimide substrate
• Identifying a stain on an electrode
Analyzing Passivation Layers
For medical devices, ensuring proper surface chemistry and thickness of passivation layers is critical to product quality and human safety. At Innovatech Labs, we use surface analysis techniques such as electron spectroscopy for chemical analysis (ESCA) and Auger to analyze stainless steel and nitinol passivation layers for thickness, contaminants and cleanliness.
Let Us Serve Your Quality Control Testing Needs
If you think you’re in need of quality control testing, contact Innovatech Labs today. We’ll work with you to identify the best materials testing technique for the application, explain our findings and maintain trend charts to help you keep on top of your quality control efforts.