Tried-and-true, portable hardness testers expand their use from testing heavy parts to testing hard-to-reach areas.
When nothing else will do, it is time for portable hardness testers to step up to the plate. Or, more accurately, it is time for these devices to step up to heavy or hard-to-reach parts.
Portable hardness testers are useful in a number of arenas, including the aircraft industry where they first got their start. "They're useful in the field, obviously, to test large parts that you can't bring to a benchtop tester," says William Luck, product manager for Qualitest USA LLC (Fort Lauderdale, FL). Other customers want to use portable devices for rapid testing of incoming parts, "basically as they're coming off the truck so they can determine right away what's good and what's bad," he says. In addition, they're often used when a benchtop tester cannot accept a large part and clients do not want to cut down their parts to test them.