Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Testing times

I think I've said before about how you are constantly learning stuff when you run your own business. Well I've been learning about testing the breaking point of elastic cords over the last couple of weeks and it is making my head hurt!

You would think its easy ... grab a bit of cord; put it in a machine; pull on it until it breaks; record the amount of pull. But no. The first thing that you realise is that as elastic cord stretches it also gets thinner. So the clamps in the machines loose their grip and it all goes wrong.

THEN ... the local company who does a lot of our testing Lifting and Crane, in Gloucester, get very short notice that they have to move. So the day I go to see them I find all the test equipment packed in boxes and half of it has already gone to the new site! So there will be a delay until they get themselves unpacked and settled.

In the meantime I need to find an answer to this getting thinner and letting go problem. My initial thought is to use Slidetite Binders and / or Plates. I may well test this for myself later in the week ... could be fun :-) Massive amounts of stress in an elastic cord until it breaks.

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