Inspection Lab Temperature Requirements

What might you be inspecting in your lab?

You might try MIL-STD-45662. No guarantees, it's been a long time.

For what it is worth: 68 degrees Fahrenheit equals 20 degrees Celsius, A standard, good to work in and with and easy to use worldwide.

If you look at the various "standard" conditions specified by different organizations, you will find a wide range of temperatures and pressures used. In the US, it seems that the NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) uses a temperature of 20 °C (293.15 K, 68 °F) and an absolute pressure of 101.325 kPa (14.696 psi, 1 atm) while the IUPAC (International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry) uses a temperature of 0 °C (273.15 K, 32 °F) and an absolute pressure of 100 kPa (14.504 psi, 0.986 atm). There are a host of other "standards" out there so you need to check what tests you are doing and what regulatory body controls.

You would think that a "standard" would be easy but in the engineering world nothing is!

Good Luck...

NIST also has a standard for the Thermocouples that are involved in the process. I;m going to assume based on the temps listed that you have Type "K" thermocouples as part of the process. Type "K" have a spec of +/- 1.2 degrees C or 2 degrees F.

WIth that, your best case measurement will be +/- 1.2 degrees C or 2 degrees F.

Hope this helps.

The laboratory quality system may have been designed around ISO Guide 17025, which is the standard used by A2LA (et all) to audit the quality system of the lab. But it doesnt specify conditions, it indicates that the conditions be "such as to facilitate correct performance of the test and/or calibration". To me that means that the specific article you are inspecting has a standard somewhere that defines the ambient conditons required. For example, calibration laboratories have to store gauge blocks for a preiod of time at a specific temperature to account for the coefficient of thermal expansion. So each industry has a standard of some kind that defines this, and in many cases there are several.

If you can tell me what you are inspecting, I can probably identify the standard you might be using.

Not sure about your question, but read ASTM 370. Maybe you fish something there.

ANSI Y14.5

The effects of thermal expansion should be taken into consideration on both the part and the gage.The temperature of the part and the gage should be the same.68°F is the ideal temperature at which both part and gage should be at when inspected because gages are calibrated at 68°F.This effectively eliminates any error due to thermal expansion.