Quality Test & Inspection: Casting Company Opens Its Testing Labs
One of the world's largest investment casting companies has opened up its captive laboratory to other companies.
The "lab" is more of a labyrinth than just a laboratory. Each corridor feeds room after room. And each room holds sophisticated, multifunctional testing equipment. In one room, a scanning electron microscope (SEM) is engaged in nondestructive test (NDT) analysis. In another, banks of creep-rupture machines conduct testing of aerospace alloys at blazing temperatures. Contact and noncontact, destructive and nondestructive, chemical and physical, Howmet Casting (Whitehall, MI) testing laboratory seemingly can do it all. And do it well.
These labs must be good because it is here that testing is done on parts, both massive and miniscule, that power jets, generate electricity and operate in corrosive and destructive environments.