A Tier 1 supplier reformulated their primer coating midway through a production run. No OEM notification. No requalification test. The change was minor, they said. Six weeks later, the field corrosion reports started. Within three months, they were sitting in a corrective action meeting with the OEM. This is a case study in what salt…
A seat fabric qualifies at initial submission. Color holds at specification. Eighteen months later, warranty claims start coming in for fading on door panel trim from the same material family. The fabric passed the test. The trim didn’t get tested the right way. The difference was the method. ISO 105-B06 Procedure 5 is the xenon…
Here’s something that trips up even experienced suppliers. You run xenon arc weathering. You have the hours, the equipment, the data. You submit to GM. The submission comes back invalid, not because the test was wrong, but because it was the wrong test. Ford doesn’t accept GM’s method. GM doesn’t accept Ford’s. Rivian and Tesla…
A material can meet every specification at the time of qualification and still fail six months after launch. The part warps after heat aging. The nylon component swells with moisture and no longer fits the assembly. The gasket loses thickness under compression and the seal leaks. Dimensional stability testing measures how a material changes shape…
A coated part can pass UV weathering, look fine in the test lab, and then blister in the field within a season. The UV exposure didn’t cause the blistering. The moisture did. Specifically, the overnight condensation that built up under the coating once the part was installed and the temperature started cycling. Humidity and condensation…
Two suppliers submit weathering data for the same OEM program. Both use xenon arc equipment. Both run the same number of hours. One submission is accepted. The other is rejected. The difference isn’t the equipment or the hours. It’s the method. The rejected lab ran a general xenon cycle. The accepted lab ran the specific…
Every material that goes into a vehicle was qualified against a specification. Every specification was written by an engineer. Every test that confirmed compliance was run in a lab like this one. National Engineers Week 2026 runs February 22 through 28 under the theme Transform Your Future. We think about that theme every day. GPTesting…
A dashboard can look perfect at room temperature, ship on time, and still crack the first week it sees a real winter. The crack didn’t start in January. It started months earlier, when the part expanded under summer solar load, contracted overnight, and repeated that stress cycle until a tiny defect finally had enough leverage…
Your part passed every mechanical test on the list. Then the OEM auditor walked the line, held it up to the light, and called it a fail. A gloss reading of 5.0 when the spec said 2.5 to 4.0. That’s not a cosmetic issue. It’s a real rejection, and it happens more than most engineers…
UV damage is relentless, and it rarely shows up on day one A polymer part can look flawless at launch and still fail in the field. UV damage works like slow mechanical fatigue: you do not notice the early hits, then one day the surface chalks, the color shifts, the gloss drops, or a once-tough…
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