Company Update – Cranage
Cranage unveils new facilities for climatic and environmental simulation
With over 30 years experience working in the product testing and certification industry, Keith Richens of Cranage explains how the company is further expanding in response to customer needs
T
he influence of climatic con- ditions, which may be con- sidered exceptional, and
the UK government’s strategy to support British businesses looking to export to the global market will require manufacturers to famil- iarise themselves with country- specific regulations and consider the potential impact of the sur- rounding natural and man-made environment on their products. The consequences of natural and ad- verse induced environments is now, more than ever before, being anticipated and allowed for in prod- uct design, which in turn, is being integrated into the strategic man- agement of the supply chain to provide a sustainable competitive advantage. Cranage’s new facilities were conceived in 2020 with a vision to provide a convenient, fast, and af- fordable all-year-round solution to climatic testing in the UK. It is a laboratory facility to simulate the effects of weathering, ageing, and degradation of products and ma- terials due to physical agents and environmental conditions. Such ef- fects may render a product or ma- terial completely unsuitable for its intended use. As a means of ac- celerating the impact of environ- mental stress, it develops an alter- native service to sending products
and materials overseas for long- term testing in natural outdoor sites and provides a flexible solution for evaluating the performance of products for the global market. The environmental test facility at Cranage is a multipurpose re- source for simulating the majority of environments in which products may be operated, stored and transported. It houses a vast range of specialised equipment to apply environmental stress parameters to suit worldwide climatic condi- tions which include naturally oc- curring ambient anticipated for the area of use, induced ambient re- sulting from the modification of a natural climatic condition which may arise in transit, and steady state ambient that exists in con- trolled environments such as stor- age areas.
SIMULATING WORLDWIDE ENVIRONMENTS
Using meteorological data from various sources including NASA, Cranage has simulated a tropical humid climate with solar radiation and heavy rainfall typical of a mon- soon for a railway signalling project exported to Southeast Asia. In complete contrast, outdoor use products exported to Saudi Arabia are tested under hot arid climatic conditions at low humidity with ex-
26 /// Testing & Test Houses /// December 2022
The new environmental facility includes a 50m2
indoor
test area for evaluating water ingress of both large and small products. There is also a specialist vibration testing space and a large walk-in dust test chamber with an internal test volume of 18m3
for testing machinery with a maximum footprint of 3m x 2m
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