During a recent conference for composite part manufacturers, I chatted with two attendees who were very complimentary about the easy-to-use TRAC feature of our AccuClave product line. Both of these individuals were from major composite part manufacturing companies that are using our products as lead and lag part thermocouples in their autoclave processing.
Sharing his recent audit experience with me, one individual was asked: “How do you know if the part thermocouple was Type J calibration as the specification required?” To confirm the calibration, he took the NADCAP auditor on-line to the TRAC AccuClave Tracking on our website and entered in the TRAC characters that are laser etched into each of the pre-made thermocouple assemblies. Immediately, they could see that the products were Type J, just as specified.
The second customer thanked TE Wire for providing such a valuable tool. He recently had the opportunity to use the TRAC system when a NADCAP auditor challenged that the autoclave lead lag part thermocouples being used met the specified Special Limits temperature accuracy. After entering the eight characters into our on-line TRAC system, it displayed the calibration accuracy data and proved to the auditor that the AccuClave thermocouples were in compliance with the BAC-5621 specification. The satisfied auditor moved on and did not challenge any other temperature issues during the three day audit.
Needless to say, having access to such an easy method of traceability as the TRAC system saved these two composites manufacturers a lot of time searching for documentation during their audits.