Where the
world gathers for metal finishing
Q&As since 1989


-----

Statement of conformance/non-conformance

2005

If I send a purchase order without referencing a specification accept/reject criteria, stating the part observed hours to white & red, (with an accompanying specification) and then an extended test hours, beyond the specification, as requested by the customer, then,

#1) Is it per ASTM B117 "understood" that the accept/reject criteria for the hours is zero allowed, and,

#2) Should the accompanying specification be disregarded due to the request of the extended hours?

Sandy Mcglade
employee - Jackson, Michigan

---

Sandy,

If your customer asks for it then you need to deliver, else your CoC will be invalid.
It is your responsibility to ensure that, to the best of your knowledge, you have complied with all parts of your customer specification.

Now, the customer is all important (maybe a little odd, bizarre or even downright wrong) and what he/she says goes.

ASTM B117 is a test method and does not impose accept/reject criteria on its users, that is normally set by the design authority. It is therefore valid for your customer to request the test to be carried out in accordance with ASTM B117 and then inspected to their requirements (as bizarre as this may seem).

Brian Terry
Aerospace - Yeovil, Somerset, UK
2005

---

2005

Certainly Mr. Terry is 100 percent correct. A customer could write their own spec from scratch without referencing any generally accepted spec, and it would be perfectly valid. Or he could save himself a huge amount of effort by saying: "Process per spec XXXXX and test per spec YYYYY except blah blah blah"; it's perfectly valid and may even be reasonable.

From the plater's point of view, this may end up being very good: Several times on these pages (e.g., letters 34235 & 31317) we have discussed the issue of who is supposed to be the expert--the buyer or the plater--and whose responsibility it is if parts perform poorly. If the parts don't perform well, but the buyer started with an industry accepted spec and then took it upon himself to modify it, it seems to me that he has implied that he knows precisely what he is doing, and has transferred to himself a large responsibility.

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey