Most compound development runs through an outside laboratory. You mix a batch, ship specimens, and wait several days for numbers. Every iteration costs that wait, and the people formulating the rubber never speak directly to the people measuring it. Our lab is in the same 142,000 square foot building as the mixers and the presses.
Hours instead of days
A chemist can carry a batch mixed this morning to the durometer and the tensile frame this afternoon. On a development program with four or five iterations, that is usually the difference between a month and a week.
What accreditation gives you
Our ISO/IEC 17025:2017 scope covers eighteen methods. In practice that means documented procedures, calibrated equipment, stated measurement uncertainty, and an audit trail behind every number. A result from an accredited method holds up in a customer quality audit without further explanation.
The people who formulate the compound are the people who run the test. If a result looks wrong, we are the ones who have to explain it.
Where you should still use an outside lab
We are not an independent testing house. If a customer or a regulator requires third-party impartiality, use one, and we will say so rather than argue the point. For development work, failure analysis, and production verification, having the lab a few steps from the press is worth more.
If you have a part that is failing and no test data behind it, send it in with whatever service history you have. The lab will tell you what it can measure and what it cannot.