Kiguchi Technics is a third-party testing laboratory that evaluates materials for a wide range of applications used in the automotive, electronics, energy, aerospace, infrastructure, and biomedical industries. While based in Japan, they provide testing services for companies all over the world – offering a range of services to cover everything from specimen fabrication and heat treatment to a wide variety of static and dynamic testing capabilities. They handle all processes in-house to ensure high quality, short delivery times, and low costs.

When visiting their facility, we noted an impressive array of CNC machines for specimen fabrication, which allow their teams to receive raw materials from customers and fabricate the necessary specimens per testing standard requirements. The Kiguchi Technics facility also boasts multiple labs full of testing machines – including labs with rows of dynamic testing systems that run low and high cycle fatigue tests all hours of the day, and other labs fully outfitted with advanced static testing systems for tensile, compression, and flex testing.

While Kiguchi Technics is capable of testing a wide range of materials, their facility is particularly well suited for testing high-strength metal alloys and composites. They recently acquired multiple Instron 6800 Series floor model universal testing systems that offer high precision and alignment capabilities for meeting Nadcap requirements. These systems are designed to withstand the large shock loads and vibration that occurs when testing these types of materials.

More recently, Kiguchi Technics integrated Instron’s latest lab management solution – Bluehill Central – which allows Kiguchi Technics to remotely manage all the Instron universal testing systems in their facility. Bluehill Central is a networked lab management solution that utilizes Kiguchi Technics’ internal network to connect all of their Instron universal testing systems through a central server.

Now that they’ve connected their systems with Bluehill Central, Kiguchi’s lab managers can be much more efficient because of the following new capabilities:

• User accounts can be created and managed remotely for all systems, instead of independently at each system
• Teams can be created to empower operators with the system permissions they need to do their jobs, while limiting access where necessary
• Centralized file storage allows them to easily share test methods across their test machines
• File revision approval control and electronic signature capabilities ensure traceability in their processes using the Traceability module for Bluehill Central
• Quickly search, display, and analyze results over time across multiple samples and test systems using the TrendTracker module for Bluehill Central

By continuing to adopt the latest technology for their labs, Kiguchi Technics is able to reduce the number of routine and repetitive tasks in their testing process, allowing their employees to focus on more complex and creative tasks, thereby increasing productivity.