If you are designing a product and manufacturing some of your own materials, you likely want to make sure that the materials that you are making are able to stand up to the rigors of frequent usage. You don't want angry customers returning your product because it broke down earlier than you promised that it would. As a result, you are going to need to do some extensive materials testing. Here are some tips for getting the testing done and making sure that it as effective and thorough as possible.

1. Use Non-Contact Extensometers:

The first thing that you want to do is use extensometry to make sure that your materials experience the amount of force and pressure that they will be experiencing during a regular use case. This involves making sure that the material does not deform under the testing conditions. You have 2 options when it comes to extensometry. You can either use contact extensometers, which is essentially physically subjecting the materials to the actual conditions that they will be under. This can be time consuming and expensive, because you will need to tweak the tests to get the details just right. It also will physically degrade the materials, which means that you will end up manufacturing materials that will never actually go into the product, wasting material and supplies.

Your second option is to use non-contact extensometers, which use lasers and video to simulate the physical changes that certain levels of force will have on your material and whether it will be able to withstand it without being physically changed. There is also a reduced chance of error due to the lack of moving parts.

2. Use Specimen Bending:

The easiest way to identify possible weak points in your material is to bend it. This means that you will be able to see how your material is affected when it is bent, as well as check for non-uniform stress conditions that will allow the material to behave in a manner that will not be conducive to the product. Finally, the edges of the material are tested because the edges tend to be other weak spots.

For more information, talk to a company that specializes in mechanical testing. This will allow you to make sure that the materials that you have created have the physical properties and resilience that you need to function at a very high level.