Select and validate materials for performance, manufacturability, cost and real service conditions.
Datasheet equivalence is not service equivalence. Two grades can match on tensile strength, melt flow index and density and still behave differently in your part — because the additive and filler package differs, because the molecular weight distribution differs, because one tolerates regrind and the other does not, or because the difference only appears after two years of thermal cycling in the field.
The failures that follow a substitution usually arrive months later, well after the saving has been booked and the decision has stopped being reviewed.
Not the nominal ones. Peak and sustained temperature, load type and duration, chemical and UV exposure, humidity, cycling, assembly stresses, cleaning regime, expected service life and what failure would actually cost. Most poor selections trace back to a requirement that was never written down.
Screening uses the Granta Design Cambridge Engineering Selector® alongside four decades of experience across the material classes below. The database widens the field beyond what is familiar; the experience is what keeps the shortlist realistic about processing, supply and cost.
A material that meets every performance requirement and cannot be moulded reliably in your tool, on your line, at your cycle time is not a candidate. Processing window, drying sensitivity, shrinkage and warpage behaviour, weld-line strength, regrind tolerance and colour stability are assessed alongside performance.
Testing is specified to close the specific gaps between what is known and what the decision needs, using university and industry laboratory partners. The point is a decision you can defend, reached at the lowest cost that still supports it.
A written selection record — what was considered, what was rejected and why — is what makes the decision reviewable later, and what protects it if the part is ever the subject of a claim.
A short conversation is usually enough to tell whether independent technical review is worth it — and if it is not, you will be told so.
Describe what is happening, what it is costing and what decision is waiting on it. You will get a direct assessment of whether and how this can be investigated.
Discuss Your ChallengeSend the parties and the technical subject matter only — no case details, no documents. Conflicts are cleared before any substantive discussion takes place.
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