Calibration is a much misunderstood and undervalued field that nevertheless has enormous practical significance.
Involving the comparison or matching of measurement equipment to a known reference standard in order to determine the deviation from it, is a complex field of endeavour that is central to manufacturing and quality assurance processes.
Tellumat Electronic Manufacturing, the contract manufacturing arm of technology group Tellumat, operates one of only a handful of SANAS-accredited calibration laboratories in the Cape, offering calibration as part of a quality assurance service to external and internal customers.
Murison Kotzé, managing executive of Tellumat Electronic Manufacturing, says having SANAS approval enables the company to maintain exceptionally high standards of quality assurance and testing, both of which are crucial in electronic manufacture.
“Our customers benefit in that they can rest assured the test equipment used while manufacturing their products is always calibrated to international standards, thereby ensuring that any fault is detected before the product leaves our facility.”
Complex endeavour
At heart an engineering firm that also offers technologies from best-of-breed global vendors, Tellumat’s skills base is weighted towards product engineering, manufacturing and project management. Outside manufacturing, the company has deep domain expertise in two very diverse fields – defence and telecoms. It has developed nine product families in 10 years of operation and maintains an up-to-date knowledge base of the technologies it represents.
But while these services have stood the group in good stead, they also make the calibration lab’s task complex. “The task of offering a trustworthy service in such diverse scenarios has made it necessary to become accredited with the SA National Accreditation System (SANAS) in three highly technical fields,” says Bill Clarke, managing executive for quality assurance.
SANAS credentials
Tellumat’s calibration laboratory became SANAS-approved in 1996 (see www.sanas.co.za/directory/cali_default.php for its listing). It was originally accredited under the National Calibration Service (NCS), a SANAS forerunner, in 1983. Its current accreditation covers calibration services in the fields of time and frequency, radio frequency and DC low-frequency.
Clarke says certain ranges apply – for example, its radio frequency accreditation falls within the 100 kHz to 1 GHz range. “Radio frequency is a very broad field,” Clarke explains. “It covers everything from broadcast transmitters to cellphones to industrial microwave communications equipment. Within that range, we cover quite a few parameters, but not all.”
He says Tellumat can do other measurements for which it is not SANAS-accredited (as part of its ISO 9000 quality assurance procedures), and keeps meticulous records and adheres to processes that give its measurements incontestable pedigree.
Practical significance
To fully appreciate the significance of calibration, Clarke offers the following example: arriving in a foreign country a cellphone user switches on his phone and it is automatically detected by the foreign cellphone networks.
Cellular phone systems operate to international specifications which make roaming possible, as long as each element of the system is within its specified operating parameters such as frequency. Every manufacturer of cellphone equipment therefore has to ensure its measuring equipment is calibrated through a process which is traceable to international measuring standards. This is the role of the calibration laboratory and why international traceability is all-important.
By implication, Clarke says, the customer benefits of proper calibration include credibility and international acceptance of calibration certificates (if one’s products are exported). “The legal and commercial implications of poor calibration are immense, pointing to a clear need to select the right manufacturing or calibration partner,” he says.
For more information contact Murison Kotzé, Tellumat, +27 (0)21 710 2241, [email protected], www.tellumat.com
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