Sylvia Hillier our Textile Testing expert attended the ISO TC 38 meeting in September located in Beijing, China. The ISO meetings are held every two years and bring together member of the working groups, sub-committees, ending in the plenary meeting of ISO TC38.

The meeting was of significant importance this year as for many years of holding the Chair & Secretary of ISO TC38, this was handed over to China & Japan as a joint venture.

The meeting was attended by key members of the committees from accross the globe, and included Bob Lattie who represented the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) supported by SDL Atlas, and Sylvia Hillier the UK representative of ISO TC 38, who was supported by Tinius Olsen. Both Tinius Olsen and SDL Atlas have taken an active role in International Standardisation along with many other companies.

K&N Engineering, Inc., the Riverside, CA-based manufacturer of high performance air and oil filters, has been proving and improving the quality of its products using Tinius Olsen materials testing machines since 2006. According to Jonathan Fiello, who heads the in-house lab, K&N employs its bench-top T-series 50k universal testing machine to test virtually every material, component, and aspect of its filters.

“We use our Tinius Olsen machine for just about any tensile test we can apply. We have two 5,000 lb load cells, as well as some smaller units, and as long as we have the right grips, we can QC each part and overall assembly and document performance.”

K&N tests everything from the bond strength of its adhesives, to the wire layers of its filters, to mold release characteristics, to tear strength of urethane and rubber specimens, to warranty claims. The latter was one of the first applications of the Tinius Olsen UTM when Fiello was asked to document the point of product failure of one of the company’s filters to show that it could not possibly have been a contributing factor in an auto accident liability case. The clear results enabled K&N to win in court.