Hope you all doing great...
I was doing some experiments in lab and found a descrepancy of an estimated 15-20% which to my surprise shouldnt have been there and finally after consulting my friends and colleagues i got the equipment cleaned and placed at a location where it was more stable causing less vibrations (Did do the calibrations myself) and what i had presumed was absolutely right. We sometime go on with the flow and dont give improtance to the error inclusion that might creep in due ti variius reasons. the point of discussiing this is to know if some of you have encountered the same problem and how did you rectify it. this surely is one area where we need to b vigilant enough esp in large labs where maintenance ia done once a year for bulky machines etc..
Of course you need to calibrate your equipment and perform good maintenance. Like the pipetting error in the old days, there will always be an analyser error nowadays, mainly bias for wrong settings but also imprecision due to wear.
What kind of equipment / kind of lab are you dealing with? Best option is to perform regular (time interval dependent on the purpose) both internal and external quality control and keep your equipment within the specs your manufacturer and your professional organisation have laid down
Jos Wielders Thankyou Dr for your timely response, i was using a proving ring of 50kN capacity and encountered the error...but since it was being used continuosly thats y the calibration needed to be done..usually we calibrate the equipments aftr 6 months which is the standard procedure but here due to overload the error was noticed...hence i calibrated it and found the results to be much more within accpetable range
I typically find that if I want to have absolute understanding and confidence in my lab measurements, I need to take complete ownership of the instrumentation.
This can be very frustrating due to the time required to learn the behavior of various forms of instrumentation technology, but it is critical to solidly founded research. Good instrumentation and lab equipment respect and savvy pays off many-fold once enough experience is gained for a general feel of circuit behavior, electromechanical encoding and data stream management and whatever power systems may be involved, etc. Load cell and mechanical load testing is no exception, and mastery of soldering and applied surface coatings and adhesives technology to do ones own strain gauge measurements can enable exceptional resolution and utility of test data. Balancing a strain gauge bridge amplifier may become a requisite skill at some point in your career, no worries because is relatively easy to pick up on the go. Experience will tell you, however, how to avoid letting that amplifier get out of balance to begin with.
Applied science is "measure and compare". Make a measurement, change a variable, and make another measurement. In many aspects of research and developmental work, the instrumentation and testing hardware is literally the life blood of the effort, along with the experience to know how to use them correctly, and how not to use them incorrectly....
All problems come closer into achievable scope when ownership of instrumentation and testing hardware is embraced and practiced on a career development level. From scanning electron microscopy to all types of soldering to PCB prototyping to cable design/build/test/repair, hybrid analog-digital and operator interface circuitry, etc.; it all comes in handy for leveraging collaboration and expanding original research. So as long as you have good guidance from anyone else in the shop about how to use and how not to use a particular machine, you are very likely better off taking charge of the overall process, even when the process of learning whatever the specific machine requires its own investment of time. Its a good investment, and the practice of making that investment is synergistic in the long run.
Thankyou Thomas H. S. Harris for your detailed practical response. It seems based on your first hand practical eperience you have perfectly answered the requirment of a calibrated and sound systems in the lab.
Regards Wani