Annual Calibration

Annual Factory Inspection and Calibration
As with any precision instrument, annual factory inspection & calibration are critical for a Konica Minolta Sensing instrument. The performance and accuracy become lower with age and are accelerated based on a number of conditions. Factors such as frequency of use and location environment are among the two most important. Heavy usage, along with dirty or dusty environments are the biggest contributors that lead to poor performance or even catastrophic failure. Annual factory inspection is highly recommended by Konica Minolta Sensing to ensure instrument peak performance.

Why Annual Factory Inspection Is Critical
Usage of instruments without factory inspection could cause problems like those pictured here. These issues will cause an instrument to give improper measurements and if left, cause an instrument failure.

Along with an overall physical inspection of a unit, Konica Minolta Sensing also ensures that all sensors, detectors and system optics are all performing at the like new factory calibrated standard. If any deviation is found, it is immediately corrected.

Why Annual Factory Calibration Is Critical.
A popular misconception is that daily calibration, performed by a user is the same as an annual factory calibration. The two calibrations are not the same and it is important to understand the difference. A new instrument has its optics and sensors calibrated at the factory to a traceable set of calibration standards with known values. This is what gives Konica Minolta excellent inter-instrument agreement, meaning two of the same units will read nearly identically.

Daily calibration is meant to prepare the unit for use. The environmental conditions where the instrument is located plays an important role in its measurement performance. Temperature and humidity are the single biggest factors which affect system performance. As temperature and humidity increase and decrease throughout the day and day to day, measurement readings will be affected. Daily calibration with the factory included white tile brings the instrument back to proper operating conditions and will provide consistent measurements day to day.

Recommendations for Annual Factory Calibration & Inspection.
Annual factory inspection and calibration protects your equipment investment and also reduces waste and reject of your product. Inconsistency in measurement values translates directly to inconsistency in production and can cost a company hundreds of thousands of dollars in losses.