Handheld makes testing better for VOR

One of the latest pocket-sized digital testers is helping VOR Transmissions improve and speed hardness testing at its factory in Willenhall. A specialist in remanufacturing top grade transmissions for PSV coaches and commercial vehicles, VOR has adopted the portable approach chiefly to ensure through, rapid and economic testing of components rescued from defective gearboxes and drive trains. Previously, the company transported selected parts - mainly gears and shafts - to an outside test house to establish if they had, for example, been softened by overheating.

This was a slow and costly process that militated against comprehensive investigation of all potentially useful components, particularly the large and heavy ones.

With the handheld tester from Indentec the company can now carry out in-situ and bench testing of all parts immediately, regardless of component weights, sizes, shapes and awkwardness of location.

Additionally, debatably valuable parts that once might have been ignored can now be included in the test programme.

Less than half the price of a conventional benchtop hardness testing machine, the Indentec instrument can be applied from any direction, including (unusually) upside down, to produce an on the spot reading and print out of the hardness of the component in any of the popular hardness scales.

VOR, which tests mostly to the Rockwell C scale, says that the compactness and easy operation encourage general use by shop floor staff, leading to more exhaustive searches for viable components.

The tester calculates hardnesses automatically to plus/minus 0.5 percent scale accuracy.

The reading appears on a built in digital display, which also shows test scale, material tested, number of tests, running average hardness, direction of test, and ultimate tensile strength.

The results are recorded by an infrared printer for logging in computer.

According to VOR, this instant availability of printed hardness confirmation is helpful in negotiations with customers and suppliers.

It also provides hardness records for components destined for stock to wait remanufacture into new transmissions or delivery as spare parts