Stress/Strain Tester, Product Development Laboratory

Our customer needed a product performance testing apparatus for several components of varying size and shape. Caztek Engineering delivered a bench top stress-strain tester capable of quickly completing a test cycle, capturing the data in real-time and resetting for the next test article. The dc motor driven z-axis lead screw acquires strain data through a rotary encoder and stress data with a compression load cell. The test cycle is initiated through the control panel push button with a PLC controlling the position of the head and the sequence of operations. The sensor data is displayed at the control interface and captured by a data acquisition board which outputs directly into an attached laptop computer. The resultant stress-strain curves are recorded and graphed in Excel for comparison.