Panel Maker

One of the most common quality assurance requirements for FRP materials is the making of witness panels from which coupons are extracted for laboratory testing per ASTM D3039. Very often, up to four such panels may be required to be produced per day.

Making such witness panels is an art form…and many installers have dedicated personnel to make them. The reason is that the tension test results from the panels are almost always used by the inspectors or engineers-of-record to accept or reject the FRP material that is being installed in the field. And by the time the test results come back from the lab, the material corresponding to the tested coupons has often been hanging on the structure for weeks. If the test results are unsatisfactory, this material may need to be removed and reinstalled…or additional layers may have to installed. This is not good news for the installer.

Also, most top installers use saturating machines to impregnate or saturate the FRP in the field. However, witness panels are often made on table tops, with a sheet of plastic on which mixed resin is poured and small squares of FRP are saturated with a lot of manual handling. Such a manual process can result in inconsistently prepared witness panels, which can then have a significant impact on the material testing results.

To mitigate such inconsistencies, Külstoff has developed a unique Witness Panel Maker (BA-ATM). This little table top machine takes the art out of making witness panels. In an operation that closely resembles the saturation of the FRP fabrics for installation, you can now make witness panels that are consistently the same, time after time. The time required to make the panels is substantially reduced and almost anyone on your crew can make these panels.

See for yourself how easy and intuitive it is to make perfect witness panels with the Külstoff BA-ATM Panel Maker…