At first glance, you might think I’m losing it with the title of this month’s rant. After all, who would pay anything for ‘zero’ or nothing? It turns out a lot of people try to get ‘nothing’ or ‘zero’ and end up with more than they bargained for at a very high cost to get there.

One would hope that once a calibration laboratory has been accredited by a recognized agency, you could take the uncertainties shown on their scope of calibration at face value. 

I often take shots at those companies with great quality systems that get their calibration reports, scan them for red flags and then file them away if none are present. 

In my last column I mentioned the Market Research Study: United States Testing Laboratories done by the Consulting Group at Virginia Tech with Rachel Trebour as the project manager.

About twenty years ago I was asked to make a presentation on calibration to a meeting of a local chapter of the National Conference of Standards Laboratories. 

I was chatting with a colleague recently, a well-known supplier of precision measuring instruments. I noted, sarcastically, that his company was promoting a half-day training seminar on calibration and best of all—it was free! 

Typical answers include: cheaper, faster, most accurate, none of which would pass a technical smell test. On reflection, many might say they want calibration to tell them if the item to be calibrated is any good or not while not defining what ‘good’ means from a technical point of view.

With more people than ever beginning to read what’s actually printed on calibration reports these days, what was supposed to bring clarity to measurements seems to be providing more discussions and arguments.

As a supplier of all types of measuring instruments, we are regularly asked to quote the cost of repairing some of them. In days gone by, it was a common service offered by many in the industry but modern technology has changed all that while increasing the amount of garbage to the local landfill. Marketing and manufacturing are both to blame.

Our industry is fraught with tales of quality audits from hell and other less than desirable places, usually the result of standards written by folks who know a little but expand it to encompass a lot.