I worked as a ME Tech for 5 years at a company that made residential water processing equipment. We produced many of our own parts via injection molding, and out of a variety of raw materials. One of my responsibilities was to run water-pressurized cycle tests on a specified number of our parts and assemblies, at 3x the psi of the highest municipalities in the country, and run them until they failed. We did this for every run of parts, and still had occasional failures in the field. Because we put our product through such rigorous testing though, they were few and far between.
I left that job in 1996, but I can guarantee those tests are still being run today. It was insurance of sorts, and the original owners of the company would never have had it any other way. They were both Engineers, and good ones at that. Two of the most intelligent men I've ever had the pleasure of working for, and they knew the value of that testing enough to visit my little corner of the shop on occasion just to see how things were holding up. I can't imagine the damage that could be done to people's homes without it. I would not have had that job, because the company would never have stayed in business, but for those cycle tests.
I worked as a ME Tech for 5 years at a company that made residential water processing equipment. We produced many of our own parts via injection molding, and out of a variety of raw materials. One of my responsibilities was to run water-pressurized cycle tests on a specified number of our parts and assemblies, at 3x the psi of the highest municipalities in the country, and run them until they failed. We did this for every run of parts, and still had occasional failures in the field. Because we put our product through such rigorous testing though, they were few and far between.
I left that job in 1996, but I can guarantee those tests are still being run today. It was insurance of sorts, and the original owners of the company would never have had it any other way. They were both Engineers, and good ones at that. Two of the most intelligent men I've ever had the pleasure of working for, and they knew the value of that testing enough to visit my little corner of the shop on occasion just to see how things were holding up. I can't imagine the damage that could be done to people's homes without it. I would not have had that job, because the company would never have stayed in business, but for those cycle tests.