“It’s not a good day if you don’t get wet.” This isn’t just my motto as an avid scuba diver, it’s my motto when it comes to product testing, and here at Paramount Pool and Spa Systems we do a LOT of testing. Most of which takes place in a pool or test tank.
Jokes aside, Paramount takes advantage of the latest technologies for testing during all stages of product development. This includes creating the components as 3D models so we can take advantage of virtual testing like FEA (Finite Element Analysis), flow analysis, motion simulation, and other types of testing even before a prototype part is made.
We will make changes and improvements to product components based on lessons learned from the virtual testing. A product may go through several rounds of virtual testing before getting the nod to go to the next step: prototypes.
After the prototypes are created, it’s time to get wet, almost. We may do hundreds of hours of functional testing with prototype parts. The kind of testing depends on the part, the product, and what we hope to learn from the test. Is it an accelerated life test? Testing drain covers to ASME A112.19.8-07? Finding the functional envelope of something new?
We want to know what works and what walks. And oh yeah, we get wet. We take the lessons learned and roll them back into the design, make new prototypes, and do it all again. As I said, we do a lot of testing.
I haven’t even talked about field testing, or all the testing we do after we have production parts, or the testing we do as part of the manufacturing process. That will have to be in another blog. I just got a call from one of my dive buddies, Whiskers. He wants to meet at the lake. You know what I always say sometimes, “It’s not a good day if you don’t get wet.”
Author: Steve Sharp is the R&D manager at Paramount
