5th December 2016
Testing is an essential requirement in the supply of any commercial product for many reasons. These include:
- Ensuring that the product is suitable for its targeted audience and that it will meet their personal quality expectations.
- Delivering on performance promises in order to gain customer satisfaction and achieve sales.
- Proving that the product is safe for the purpose for which it is sold.
- Ensuring that it complies with consumer protection legislation.
- Establishing that it conforms to any relevant government safety regulations, such as HSE or British Standards.
When you are supplying safety equipment, on which a person’s welfare may depend, it is all the more essential that the equipment is comprehensively and rigorously tested before it is supplied and at Fall-Pac we are dedicated to ensuring that all of our products provide optimum protection to our customers. For that reason we conduct extensive, regular, in-house product safety checks to provide our customers with complete confidence in our products.
All of our fall protection products comply with the most recent Health and Safety Executive Regulations as well as the Bristish Standards PAS59. Or in-house safety tests, however, take the matter of ensuring the safety of our products a step further. From our headquarters in Wigan, which is the only independent, on-site, soft fall protection testing unit in the United Kingdom, we conduct regular ‘Drop’ tests, the results of which are published every month, to provide our customers with complete reassurance as to the effectiveness and safety of our products. We are also the only company in the United Kingdom to offer bespoke testing packages.
The Fall-Pac Drop Test
The purpose of the Fall-Pac drop test is to determine the deceleration value of a person falling into one of our soft fall protection units. In order to satisfy BS PAS59 we are required to undertake 3 drop tests from the same height which show a maximum deceleration of below 14g.
How the drop test works
To simulate a real person falling onto one of our fall protection units we employ a rescue dummy weighing 100kg. A tri-axle accelerometer is attached to the dummy, which measures the gravitational force of the dummy’s impact on the fall protection unit at 3 axis points. This data is then analysed by a computer and produced in graph form. Our units are subjected to testing at various heights, subject to a maximum of 6.5 metres, which is the height of our purpose built testing facility.
Our modular fall protection units are set up in the enclosed test area and connected, using our interlocking one-click clips, in preparation for the test. The dummy is then dropped and the resulting data is recorded, computed and documented in graph form. The testing process is conducted three times per test from the same height in order to achieve result consistency.
Why the rigorous testing makes Fall-Pac the best option.
At Fall-Pac, the excellence of our products is important – but the safety of our customers is even more essential. That is why we offer our unrivaled testing process, which includes the availability of bespoke packages, to ensure that our products meet the needs of your business, are effective and, most of all, completely safe.