We had a potential customer (didn't ever pan out) who makes beef jerky and wanted us to provide advice on good hygrometer transmitters to put in the smokehouse. The person said they had trouble finding a good sensor that lasted more than three months in the smoke. That may still pan out. Another one still that may one day pan out is for a professional hockey team (can't name them) that one day I want to calibrate their instruments used to maintain ice rink temperature. We're thinking of doing that one for free as a promotional thing.
I was once handed a black box with a bunch of wires sticking out.. They asked me if I could calibrated it? I told them maybe if I had any idea what it did what to hook up to or what to expect as an output. They took it back and are still using it to this day uncalibrated. So I guess like your 2 items I did not actually calibrate it.
Hey I saw this question on Facebook!!!!!!
I did a machine that had a spiked mace hanging off it. Turned out all they wanted to know is how many times it hit an item in a length of time.
Wheel chair spoke tension meter for a wheel chair manufactuer in CA.
When I worked for a small cal lab in Florida, we did some calibration for Pepperidge Farms bakery plant.
One was a bread loaf height gage. The other was kinda related to the gage. Had to make sure a photo sensor was set to a correct height to kick off loaves of bread that were too tall. System used a blast of air to remove out of spec loaves off the conveyor belt.
That's funny. I just remembered years back we did some work for Underwriters Labs (I guess I can name names as long as I am not demeaning). They had these fixtures shaped like I think, a finger or a hand that were used for testing fan safety. They would try and stick the finger into a fan to be sure the fan had adequate physical shields. We had to calibrate the size of the fingers. That always seemed a little overkill (although I do understand that there needed to be standardization).
Wonder what they did with all thos loaves of non standard bread?
Well I did not calibrate it.. But when I was in Bomholder Germany, a base called The Rock by most people, my boss got this idea to have a Rock calibrated and placed in the front door of the Calibration Lab. Not only was in calibrated but it was 1 rock, the standard to which all rocks where to be compared.
The rock was selected for all the rock in the yard, because it was the largest one he could carry. I hear the rock is still there, only it was tossed back in the yard do to budget cuts. Or more than likey the next lab manager did not want to be to rock that got a rock re-calibrated.
Mike
Did you get certifed to calibrate that rock?
Yes.. I am guessing.. We had the only 17025 certified rock, with a NIST tracable calibration and a DA Label 80..
Quote from: USMCPMEL on 07-08-2011 -- 11:41:23
Wonder what they did with all thos loaves of non standard bread?
Some went to homeless shelters, some was made into croûtons and stuffing. They didn't waste a thing there.
That is good to know because we waste far too much in this country. I heard there is a place in Pennsylvania where they feed tons and tons of bread to carp. From what I hear there are so many carp there the ducks can and sometimes do walk across them.
http://www.roadsideamerica.com/tip/1115
I went to that place (I didn't look at the link to see if it was the same place). I actually have OLD 8mm movie film (not Super 8) that I shot in the late 60's when I was there. It was Lake Pymatuming, PA along the PA/OH border, north of Pittsburgh. Y'know, I think I have that clip digitized into DVD format. If I can figure out how to extract it to AVI or WMV, or FLV or something, maybe I'll stick it on Youtube and link it here.
I was looking yesterday on youtube there are a TON of clips for there. There is also a fish hatchery right next door to that place. I remember going when I was a kid and buying the old bread to feed the fish. AHHH good times good times...
I once calibrated a pH meter for a radar site. The probe was overgrown with greenish, algae-looking substance/material. I remember thinking to myself, "what the $%@& are those folks up to over there" ? I still think to this day why you'd need an old gnarly pH meter for a radar site. Heck, even if it was for the aquarium in the break room, would it really need to be calibrated to within +/- 2%? Just plain strange man.
Cal'd a cheap Korean-made 100 gram electric balance I bought off eBay at home with a roll of freshly minted pennies. Accuracy was +/- half a cent traceable to US Treasury Dept and Wikipedia.
I just remembered the strangest "methods" I've ever used.
I've done numerous mission/volunteer trips to Haiti (I haven't been back yet since the earthquake, but planning a trip for the future). I worked at a religious radio network in Port-Au-Prince called Radio Lumiere (you can search for and find them on the internet - great organization). My company at the time (Motorola at that time) donated a bunch of test equipment, mostly surplus things like spare 8903B's, 8901B's, Tektronix 7000 Series mainframes and plug-ins, etc.
One of the main things I did while I spent a week or so in their service lab at their main studios was to "calibrate" their test equipment. They had a bunch of very old, often cheap brand name instruments dating back to the 60s. Pretty much all of it had never been calibrated. So I had the task, with no traceable standards of intercomparing and optimizing readings on all of their instruments.
About 5 years ago I calibrated a bunch of numbered ping pong balls for the North Carolina state lottery using a go/no go gage and a mettler balance. The tolerances, especially for the weight, were really tight (+/- a few micrograms). I always wondered which games they were used on.
I actually, indirectly used that information (sort of). A while back, there was a very large award amount in our state lottery. Although I rarely participate, I decided to give it a shot. So in my normal over analysis of everything, I copied and pasted into an Excel about 10 years or so of lottery history to find the statistically highest probability winning numbers. I don't remember the numbers, the the odds were surprisingly even. There was some difference, but not much at all. I'm sure some lottery scientist has evaluated statistics versus weight tolerances on the ping pong balls to keep it very even. So you were doing your part to help assure those statistical lprobabilities stay as even as possible.
Back in the early 90's, I had on opportunity to verify the stamping force of the U.S. Mint stamping machines located in San Franscisco. These were HUGE stamping machines located on the second and third floors. We used force transducers to measure the force while jogging the machines down slowly as they approached the transducer. The stamping dies that were used on these machines were the same dies used to make the new dimes, nickels and quarters. I'm talking like 100k lbs of force came down . On our last machine, the max force appliled by the machine was not adjusted. That meant the max force the machine can produce was applied to our transducer and it mushroomed!
Very cool place to visit let alone go behind closed doors and see the whole operation!
UL wanted a customer of mine to have his windows XP computer clock calibrated. I had to calibrate the clock @ 7HOURS +/- 16 MINUTES. Pretty stupid I thought. I have learned that UL Auditors will always find something to justify charging my customers for audits.
I've calibrated sensors used in the pitfalls and sewer here at Lockheed Martin. Poop sensors... Sweet!
Protractors, I was asked to calibrate and mark certain points on a protractor.
The protractors were typical plastic protractors that would be used in any high school geometry class.
Back in the late 80's in Jeddah at Saudia Metrology I calibrated a test rack which was used to test "Mecca Indicators' for Saudi Arabian Airlines. These were round indicators with illuminated arrows in the cabin ceilings and they always pointed to Mecca - no matter where on the planet the aircraft was at the time. They took data from the INS system and via servos drove the indicators. The faithful would use them during their prayers...as did some members of the flight crews...Interesting calibration, I never noticed the Mecca Indicators on flights until I did it.
So what old-timer here has ever had the opportunity to calibrate a "bhangmeter"? (A light intensity meter used on spy satellites used to detect and estimate the yield of an atomic bomb explosion)