Helping to Improve the quality of Life.

What type of business are we in? I am sure that any stress analyst has been asked this question many times and we each probably have our own individual distinctive reply such as – stress analysis ---  strain gauges --- test and measurement instruments –etc., (In fact, it might be interesting to find out just how many different answers have been given to this question).

Depending on who you ask the question, their answer may well bring the response – “sounds interesting, but too technical for me” – and an end to the discussion.

The average person and many engineers will likely find it very interesting, as to the extent to which these interesting, “too technical for me”, products of our small and seemingly insignificant product directly or indirectly impacts our everyday lives. For example, the scales which our purchases are weighed in the supermarket or our baggage in the airport probably use strain gages. These seemingly insignificant little “postage stamps” ensure that we pay the right price for the product purchased or service received.

We may weigh ourselves on a strain gage based personal scale, which helps maintain proper body mass and health level. We may have a modern IOT microwave oven, which incorporates strain gages for automatic weighing to optimize cook settings.

The car we drive has almost certainly been developed and tested using strain gages to help make sure that it is strong enough to be safe and reliable, yet light enough to be fuel efficient to minimize cost of ownership.

Passenger aircraft have undergone extensive ground and flight structural testing to ensure passenger safety, and service longevity, yet be as light as possible to maximize payload and minimize fuel consumption, which help to reduce air fares, reduce pollution and maximize airline profitability.

There are a myriad of everyday items that we take for granted, the design and development of which has included testing with Micro-Measurements’ products.  These items include but are by no means limited to: washing machines, refrigerators, beer kegs, construction cranes, bridges, elevators, dams and buildings, athletic shoes, replacement hip joints, golf clubs, and tennis racquets, office machines, farm equipment and space vehicles, to name but a few.

Strain gages improve our medical care through hospital bed patient weighing, I.V. bag weighing, critical care infusion pump monitoring, robotic surgical systems and surgical tool design optimization.  Dosage levels of prescription drugs are more precisely measured using strain gage based pharmaceutical balances while the weight of the newborn baby is accurately measured using the same technology.

The same technology which can measure a milligram of a critical drug is also incorporated into onboard truck weighing systems to ensure on highway safety and integrity of the thousands of bridges on our interstate system and back roads across the country and around the world.

We often call our experimental stress analysis techniques the quality-control tools of design. At the end of the day; however, we enjoy the benefits of these products in the quality of our everyday lives.