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| The finished "blanket" |
LAB COMMERCE:
A PTS CUSTOMER SUCCESS STORY |
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Despite its innocuous-sounding name, the LabCommerce insulating-blanket project was a trial for PTS. They'd seen projects that were more complex and projects that were more difficult, even projects with less room for error. But they had never seen a project that combined all of these disagreeable characteristics in such a seamless and intractable way.
PTS was able to meet, resolve, and work around all of these challenges to produce the required "blanket". The customer was happy with the result and has since returned for many more projects. But this project was no cakewalk.
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MATERIAL DIFFICULTIES
LabCommerce came to PTS with a problem to be solved: How to apply precisely calibrated heat to a gas cylinder to either expel trace gases, or to keep contained gases at a constant, specified temperature. The cylinder itself was 24" long by 12" in diameter, with two stainless steel collars, one at either end.
The verbal description said "simple"; the spec-sheet said something else entirely.
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 | | Blanket: Outside View |
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"Starting from the surface of the tank, the blanket had: a layer of high-temperature aluminized fabric; then a continuous-tape heating element (with wiring); then polyamide fire proof foam insulation; then a skin of silicon-coated fiberglass fabric," recalls PTS's Josh Orkin. "Our brief: Surround the shape using these materials," he says dryly.
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 | | Blanket: Inside View |
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The problems in fabricating a shape to do that were inherent in the materials required.
"One of the fabrics was difficult to work with because it was aluminized silica about an eighth of an inch thick, so it was extremely tough to sew through" Orkin says. "Another fabric was difficult because it was so fragile it broke every time we had to crease it to make a seam."
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BUT THE CUSTOMER LOVED IT
In addition to these difficulties, PTS also had to build the blanket without sewing through either the heater-tape or the wiring, and build it so that the opening for the required temperature sensor never moved with respect to the sensor itself. If it did, the temperature data would be inaccurate, which would defeat the whole purpose of the project.
This combination of tight tolerances and incredibly unforgiving material made it impossible to recover from even slight errors in construction.
"If we screwed up, we had to disassemble the whole thing and start over," says Orkin. He points out that this is not typical of sewing. "Most of the time with sewing, if you make a mistake you can fix it. In this case, we were working with limited recovery options. If we stuck the needle in the wrong place, it compromised the material too much to be salvaged."
In the end, however, this was yet another PTS success story. "We got it built and built right" Orkin says. "The customer was very pleased, and that's what counts."
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Pro Sewing: In the end,
PTS made it look easy.
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