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Chemical analysis of raw materials ??

Midas969

Plastic
Joined
Mar 10, 2015
The company I work for is getting ready to go through an AS9100D audit to ad to our ISO cert. The consultant said that the certs from the distributor aren't enough and we need get them chemically certified from a third party. Could someone give me a suggestion on a company that can do this kind of analysis? We machine 6061 Alum and 360 Brass almost exclusively. I have googled but I figured I'd get some good info on here.

Thanks in advance,
Eric
 
The company I work for is getting ready to go through an AS9100D audit to ad to our ISO cert. The consultant said that the certs from the distributor aren't enough and we need get them chemically certified from a third party. Could someone give me a suggestion on a company that can do this kind of analysis? We machine 6061 Alum and 360 Brass almost exclusively. I have googled but I figured I'd get some good info on here.

Thanks in advance,
Eric
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they have portable star trek like phaser xray devices you touch part and press button and it gives info. it wont give heat treatment.
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normally a metal supplier can give a stamped certs sheet of what you bought but might cost extra.
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in China portable Xray device was used to tell 304 from 316 for example. i believe it in 2000 cost $100,000. in China if they gave a incorrect officially stamped metal cert sheet they could do jail time. Chinese jail is no fun. never heard of stamped cert sheet being wrong. people who get caught taking bribes are often executed. often they put those people on tv on purpose crying saying how their family will be worse off now they got caught and will be executed. sort of tv show like cops but more real
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not sure on translation but its roughly cut off head monkeys head and show the cutoff head to the other monkeys so they act more behaved
 
The company I work for is getting ready to go through an AS9100D audit to ad to our ISO cert. The consultant said that the certs from the distributor aren't enough and we need get them chemically certified from a third party. Could someone give me a suggestion on a company that can do this kind of analysis? We machine 6061 Alum and 360 Brass almost exclusively. I have googled but I figured I'd get some good info on here.

Thanks in advance,
Eric

Find a local lab that is NADCAP certified and have the samples tested there. NADCAP is the group that does the aircraft approved certification's.
 
Your consultant is so full of shit it's unbelievable.

You may indeed have a contract that requires independent certification of material. But that has nothing whatsoever to do with AS/ISO requirements.

See guys, this is the kind of horse shit that pin headed assholes throw around that gives AS/ISO a bad name. This jerkoff obviously doesn't understand shit, but he'll just start making shit up and pulling requirements out of his ass to make it look like he's doing his useless job.

If you do actually need the material re-certified, try Stork. But, if your customer is requiring it, the firm would have to be on their AVL, so you need to check with them first.
 
Just as an example of who to look for, I've used Acuren in Vancouver a few times for materials testing.

Materials Testing & Lab - Acuren


X ray fluorescence tests will give you the material composition, but NOT the carbon content.
Optical Emission Spectrometry is more accurate and gives you a complete listing of the alloyed elements.

Its not cheap though. It ran me about $450 to have two small pieces tested via OES.

I'd quiz the consultant on this a bit more.
Do you have to test EVERY bar of material you run?
Maybe just one from each heat? But if they don't trust the certs from the supplier, how can you trust that the heat stampings are correct?

It seems like you could be following the rabbit hole an awfully long way down here...
 
Your consultant is so full of shit it's unbelievable.

You may indeed have a contract that requires independent certification of material. But that has nothing whatsoever to do with AS/ISO requirements.

See guys, this is the kind of horse shit that pin headed assholes throw around that gives AS/ISO a bad name. This jerkoff obviously doesn't understand shit, but he'll just start making shit up and pulling requirements out of his ass to make it look like he's doing his useless job.

If you do actually need the material re-certified, try Stork. But, if your customer is requiring it, the firm would have to be on their AVL, so you need to check with them first.

I was going to write something similar although maybe a tad more diplomatic LOL

Maybe too late to get a good consultant?
 
I'm with Gordon and Larry;-)
Some distributors of some raw materials provide certs that ARE generated by a third party; I received some hard shim stock from McMaster just recently that was accompanied by the original test lab certs from the manufacturer. Your materials distributors may be able to provide them, rather than the boiler-plate cert docs that usually accompany purchases from the middleman.
 
Thanks every one. Larry I think your right. I did some investigating and the consultant told by boss that it need to be done every couple years. That seems a little weird to me.

Eric
 
Thanks every one. Larry I think your right. I did some investigating and the consultant told by boss that it need to be done every couple years. That seems a little weird to me.

Eric
Quality management standards are usually written in quite loose terms like "has to ensure that xxx... or "must use suitable calibration intervals"
What is actually done varies a lot and each consultant or auditor has their own pet peeves.
 
Did your company write themselves into a box with their procedure????

Its not unheard of for the in-house ISO asshole to write procedures that
require more paperwork and bullshit to ensure themselves a job..
 
Did your company write themselves into a box with their procedure????

Its not unheard of for the in-house ISO asshole to write procedures that
require more paperwork and bullshit to ensure themselves a job..
I have seen this more times than I want to remember. :nutter:
Often the in-house ISO asshole specs everything with hefty margin to satisfy auditors and consultants... without thinking how difficult and expensive its to implement it in real life. Easiest way for ISO asshole but makes everyone elses life miserable.
 
Your consultant is so full of shit it's unbelievable.

You may indeed have a contract that requires independent certification of material. But that has nothing whatsoever to do with AS/ISO requirements.

See guys, this is the kind of horse shit that pin headed assholes throw around that gives AS/ISO a bad name. This jerkoff obviously doesn't understand shit, but he'll just start making shit up and pulling requirements out of his ass to make it look like he's doing his useless job.

If you do actually need the material re-certified, try Stork. But, if your customer is requiring it, the firm would have to be on their AVL, so you need to check with them first.

Agreed. What the standard says (in principle) is you must retain the certification documentation for X amount of time and that documentation has to be traceable to the parts produced from that lot. (Depending on your internal procedures and industry best practices.) This should be done anyway to CTA (cover thyne ass).
 
the beauty if its your iso book thats all effed up- edit it!!!!!

If your ISO certified, can you just edit it? Surely if your editing your iso paper work that entails re-qualifying or not???

Again last month its not a question i would have asked, but had yet another line of work offered to me that yet again involves hoops yet also involves to all intensive purposes doing a process i already do for someone else.
 
Lot tracing is good enough for almost everyone. If you are only buying several easily differentiated metals you should not have a problem.

We have customers that explicitly ask for XRF readings so I need a machine. It is more useful in my case as we work with a lot of unusual elements and alloys. For measuring the grade of Aluminum it is total overkill.
 
Vendor supplied material certs don't mean a thing. They can grab any old piece of paper to ship with your material. The only way to know what you got is what you ordered is to have it tested. To have a chemistry only analysis done, if you tell the lab what you think it is, should be under $100.
The shop owned material testers are all well and good, but they must be calibrated and if you ever have a problem and an audit you better be ready to defend yourself.
ISO,AS doesn't require independent material testing unless you've established it as part of your QC process.
 
If your ISO certified, can you just edit it? Surely if your editing your iso paper work that entails re-qualifying or not???

Again last month its not a question i would have asked, but had yet another line of work offered to me that yet again involves hoops yet also involves to all intensive purposes doing a process i already do for someone else.

in my iso book period review and update is part of the plan.... and should be yours too.
 
in my iso book period review and update is part of the plan.... and should be yours too.

This should be part of any quality system certified or not.
Problem being that too often people like to use this to simply add more stuff and perhaps don't even consider removing things. :wall:.

When faced with such a demand or recommendation from a consultant or even the QC department the first thing I ask for is to be shown the specific paragraph in the standard that requires this.
Often you find that it is their interpretation of the standard not the standard itself.
One then has to be careful as this can get like arguing religion or politics. You and I can read the same "must do" statement and reach differing conclusions about how to get there.
Not asking or prying into such things is a big problem when using outside consultants and makes for a hard to use, hated by all system.
The hired gun works for you and is sub-servant to you. Do not let them run wild.
The better ones know this, will not be insulted if you want more info when you think needed. Others think they were born at the right hand of God and can be .... well difficult.

All nice to go way overboard on such things but the real manufacturing world does not have unlimited dollars to spend.
The entire system should work for you and in the both long and short term save you money.
If not it was done wrong.

At times it may be necessary to replace the hired gun if he/she is not doing what you need.
Too many people will not do this but you would fire a shitty production worker in a heartbeat so......

Consultants are employees, plain and simple. All their fancy talk means nothing and there are good employees and bad employees.
Create a system that works and makes money.
The idea of any QC/TQM system should be to eliminate mass inspections not add more.

(I'll step off my soapbox now but the many bad implementations out there rev me up a bit and give the whole quality and cert idea a bad name)
Bob
 
CarbideBob would do well selling no-nonsense QM systems :Ithankyou:

And I agree 100% that if the consultant seems difficult and "out of this world" you just need to find better one.

External auditors coming from your customer or some government bureau are more difficult case as you can't just fire them on the spot. But even with them you need to be ready to question their views and do some arm-wrestling. But there you have to be bit more sensitive how far you push things, like Bob said " this can get like arguing religion or politics"
Word of the mouth or rumours "in the circles" often tells you how difficult your auditor is going to be and what are his pet peeves. :smoking:
 








 
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