? Thank you Bruce, that's a far more succinct way of putting it!

???????????? -Dave

On 2/28/21 10:49 AM, Bruce wrote:

As pointed out in the last paragraph - providing uncertainty and
traceability is a method of MARKET SEGMENTATION.? You can charge less
to people who don't really need it and charge additional to those who
are required to have it.

I also was pleased with the fact that they provide the reflection data.

It does not necessarily reflect on the quality of the work.

Cheers!

Bruce


Quoting Dave McGuire <mcguire@...>:

On 2/27/21 11:44 PM, Stephen Hanselman wrote:

They can provide tracibility for absolutely no extra charge. ?Allthey need to do is list the equipment used and the recall date.

? Of course they can.? But often, companies produce reduced-cost
versions of products and services that omit certain features.? In
the calibration industry, one of those features is traceability
records. This is commonplace in the industry today, and is nothing
new.

IF they are a legit Cal Lab all of their equipment is calibrated,
some internally some externally and records are maintained. ?Theyuse the same equipment to “cal” your equipment wether they write a
cert. or not.

? Of course.? And most companies charge you extra to provide the
serial numbers, calibration dates, and uncertainties of the
equipment used to perform the calibration with your
freshly-calibrated instrument.

If they don’t supply a cert. as part of the job find a new lab that does.

? Well, pretty much all of them do it this way.? This is not new.

Running a cal facility REQUIRES that you do certain things of you
don’t you are not a cal lab

? Yes, but providing traceability records is not one of those
things. It should be, but it isn't.

? Another thing that happened in that world in the past not huge
number of years is that "calibration" no longer means "calibration",
it means "measurement".? Back in the good old days, when you got
something calibrated, it got ADJUSTED if it needed it.? They don't
do that anymore by default, unless you pay a whole lot more.

? I've gotten quite a bit of very good test equipment from a local
biggish company because it "failed calibration".? When digging
around a bit with friends who work there, I found out that the
"calibration" service that they use, which is Tektronix, doesn't
adjust anything. They merely measure it, and if it's out of spec, it
has "failed calibration" and is returned with a red tag stating
such.? This dumbass company has taken that to mean "it's broken and
must therefore be thrown out", to the delight of the companies from
whom they purchase test equipment.

? This is, as it should not be surprising to hear, an engineering
company that has a lot more managers on staff than engineers.? I
laugh at them regularly for BS like this.? Stupid suits.? A lot of
really dumb things are done in this industry, and nearly all of them
can be traced back to suits trying to wring money out of clueless
management people. The story above is a prime example, but
calibration labs not providing traceability documentation if you
don't actually need it really isn't.

? You see, a hobbyist or ham radio operator can send his Fluke 87 or
whatever in for calibration, and get it back with confidence that
his/her measurements are good.? But would that person pay an extra
couple hundred bucks for the stack of pages containing the
calibration traceability information?? No, because that information
is of no value to that person.? The calibration company doesn't save
any money by omitting it, but it does allow them to offer a cheaper
service to people who don't need that documentation, while avoiding
reducing their prices down too much on the services that their bread
& butter customers require.

??????????? -Dave

--?
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA