Budgeting for HALT Lab Work

Tuesday, December 20 2016

ACTUAL LAB TIME The total duration of your test at ESPEC depends on a few different factors.

Qualmark Lab Services

As you plan your lab services for 2017, whether at ESPEC Qualmark’s Accelerated Reliability Test Center (ARTC) Lab in Denver or one of our authorized partner labs, here are some key items to consider in your budgeting process: ACTUAL LAB TIME The total duration of your test at ESPEC Qualmark depends on a few different factors. If your functional test takes 15 minutes, then your total test time will likely be a day longer than if your test takes a minute or less. Setup time is another important variable, and depends on how many units you are testing as well as how complex the fixturing is for your product. Testing four products is ideal for finding as many failure modes as possible, but fixturing four units takes longer than fixturing one or two. Setup time can be reduced by shipping product to ESPEC Qualmark in advance so that we can work out the fixturing details before you get here. ANCILLARY TEST EQUIPMENT You may need to rent test equipment, power supplies, transformers, etc. for your test. The ARTC lab has a good inventory of basic test and data logging equipment. Again, a call to a ESPEC Qualmark Applications Engineer can help with this. INTERNAL COSTS Additional expenses may include costs associated with the product itself, shipping, resource costs for personnel and the creation of any custom functional test hardware or software required. Outside of these basics, you’ll just need to budget in travel, lodging, etc. ESPEC Qualmark can provide you with a list of recommended nearby hotels. Corporate hotel rates range from $80.00 - $120.00 a night. One thing you won’t have to worry about is the cost of vibration fixturing. Basic fixturing is included in the daily lab rate and developed by ESPEC Qualmark engineers. However complex setups may be subject to additional costs. This should get you in the ballpark for budgeting purposes.

Feel free to call ESPEC with any questions.

And remember – If it isn’t broken, you’re not done yet!

Neill Doertenbach