Salt-spray and damp-heat laboratory expansion for a third-party test house

Background

A commercial test house was turning work away. Salt-spray and damp-heat capacity was the bottleneck, and new capacity had to be commissioned inside a single quarter to keep an accreditation scope extension on track.

Solution

Six chambers in total: salt-spray units capable of NSS, AASS and CASS runs, plus temperature-humidity chambers for damp-heat items. Each unit was supplied with the uniformity and corrosion-rate verification data needed for the scope extension file.

Implementation and validation

All six units were installed, commissioned and verified within six weeks. Corrosion-rate coupons met the reference mass-loss range on the first run, and the laboratory's own verification passed on every chamber.

Outcome

Effective capacity rose by about 70 %, the accreditation scope extension was granted on schedule, and the laboratory now runs salt-spray work across two shifts.