Expert-Designed Test Equipment

For manufacturers and retailers to get their products into the market quickly, they must understand their products’ performance. UL Solutions helps preserve your long-term profits and reputation with our broad testing experience and extensive knowledge of equipment design and fabrication.

Our expertise in testing for safety, performance, durability and sustainability helps empower manufacturers, suppliers and retailers by offering expertly engineered testing equipment and accessories. By providing a solution for data collection, we can help you build value in your products and trust in your brand.

Data acquisition during your product’s research and development (R&D) phase can help you understand and benchmark the product’s performance. Knowing that your products meet the test requirements is important but understanding how the test affected the product is absolutely critical. Our test equipment collects data as it performs the test, empowering you with information regarding performance now and in the future.

To better understand the testing and equipment your products and markets require, we offer a complimentary needs assessment with our team of experts. Our sophisticated equipment, testing and solutions include:

• Human-machine interfaces (HMIs)
• Software updates
• Service agreements (optional)
• Data acquisition for receiving compliant/noncompliant status and to truly understand how a product or component performs

Partner with UL Solutions to work with a global safety science leader. Our expertise and experience allow us to understand the tests and equipment multiple industries require. We produce equipment that cycles or conducts static operations in tension or compression, from position to position, position to force, and force to force in one or multiple steps, all while collecting specific setting-based data. We actively serve a variety of industries including, but not limited to:

Furniture

For the furniture industry, our equipment can test a variety of aspects of seating, such as seating durability, vertical and horizontal arm, back and leg strength and durability, swivel testing, caster testing and more. Additionally, it can test your case goods, including door, drawer, lock and slam open and slam closed tests.

UL Solutions offers standardized equipment that meets the Business and Institutional Furniture Manufacturer’s Association’s (BIFMA’s) test requirements, which include:

• BIFMA drop tester
• BIFMA dual-arm durability tester
• BIFMA caster durability tester

Healthcare and Life Sciences

In the medical industry, our equipment can test devices such as gurneys, recliners, portable and fixed fixtures, and dental chairs for moveability, strength and durability. Our equipment helps validate load ratings and provide real-time data on how a product’s performance may degrade over time. Additionally, our equipment can validate the time in a field that a product can last under normal use. Our experts can also create custom setups to meet information goals or validate for internal benchmarking.

Some examples include:

• Equipment to validate load ratings and provide real-time data on how the product’s performance may degrade over time
• Fixtures that will validate the time in the field a product can last under normal use
• Custom setups to meet an information goal or FDA validation
• Benchmarking programs to compare and establish how products, materials or components will perform over time

Automotive and Mobility

The automotive and mobility industry represents a dynamic space where original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) conform to requirements that suppliers must meet in addition to their own supplier requirements.

Our Equipment department has the industry and design experience to help ensure that your fixtures and equipment are set up to meet these demanding requirements. Through our in-house Computer-Aided Design (CAD) and Software teams, we can design and program equipment to industry standards and custom setups. Our data acquisition software allows you to capture data in real-time so you can get updates where you want and to see how the product and/or material performs over time.

Some examples include:

• We have created universal cycle equipment that will allow you to cycle components including handles, shifters and switches to help them last over time and capture data over a decay curve so you can provide the same user experience from the first use to the last.
• We have designed fixtures to simulate actual use of a component subjected to temperature ranges from -20 to 120 degrees.

Retail

Retailers are doing more internal testing. Whether for validation, compliance, benchmarking or custom test setups, retailers need flexible equipment that provides reliable data.

Our Equipment team will work with you to determine the right equipment to fit your needs within your budget while also developing a long-term plan to allow you to realize your goals over time.

Some examples include:

• We have designed and installed equipment that retailers use to showcase to consumers the rigorous testing their products endure.
• Universal test equipment that can be utilized across product categories to cycle products for validating the product life. Examples of product categories companies have used this equipment for include automotive accessories, power tools and small appliances, to name a few.
• Retailers also use our equipment to validate products at a component level to ensure comparable substitutions in the event of supply chain interruptions or verification of cost savings opportunities.