Our customers rely on us to keep their instruments calibrated properly. We’re proud of our calibration work, but that’s not all we do. We also do repairs. We fix test equipment from just about any test equipment manufacturer, including:
- HP/Agilent,
- Anritsu,
- Ando,
- Advantest,
- Fluke,
- Datron/Wavetek
- Yokogawa,
- JDSU, and
- many other companies
In addition to repairing instruments from many different manufacturers, we can often repair instruments that are no longer supported by the manufacturer.
Does your cal company actually do repairs?
Many companies rely on their calibration company to perform instrument repairs. The problem with this is that most calibration companies don?t really do their own repairs. There are several reasons for this:
- They are not set up to do repair work.
- They don?t have the expertise, the maintenance documents (manuals), or parts needed to perform repairs.
- They have set up their labs to perform high-volume, low-cost calibrations, not time-consuming repairs.
- They are not willing to take the risk of performing repairs. Failing to perform a repair properly, or to repair an instrument in a timely manner, could cause a customer to become dissatisfied and adversely affect their calibration business.
Specify Custom-Cal repair services
If your calibration provider does not do their own repairs, we suggest that you specify Custom-Cal as your preferred source for instrument repairs. If you do not specify where an instrument is to be repaired, you are basically authorizing the cal lab to get the repair done wherever they please.
In most cases, the calibration vendor will send instruments to be repaired to the manufacturer. Very rarely do companies question sending an instrument to the manufacturer for repairs. As long as the manufacturer supports the instrument, they will no doubt be able to make the repair, but there are several reasons why this may not be the most beneficial strategy for you:
- Manufacturers often charge more for repairs than test-equipment companies such as Custom-Cal. Cal labs don’t care about the higher cost because they just pass it on to you, the customer. Not only that, they make more money on high-cost repairs because their markup is usually a percentage of the total repair cost.
- Your shipping costs may be higher because you will pay shipping to your cal lab, from the cal lab to the manufacturer and back, and then finally back to you.
- Repair costs are often higher because the broken item is part of a kit, and rather than just replacing the broken item, the manufacturer will make you pay for the entire kit, even though you don’t need most of the items in that kit.
- When asked to repair an item, a manufacturer will simply perform the repair no matter what the cost. At Custom-Cal, we will compare the cost of doing a repair vs. the cost of a replacement unit before performing a repair. If we determine that it will be cheaper for you to replace a unit instead of repairing it, we will give you that option.
Custom-Cal has been repairing test equipment for many years, saving our customers a lot of money in the process. Let us do that for you. For more information on our repair services, e-mail sales@custom-cal.com or phone of our locations:
- Hamilton, NJ: 609-530-9000 8am to 8pm Eastern time, 908-328-3663 8am – 11pm Easter time (weekends)
- Sanford, FL: 407-322-5663 7am to 4pm Eastern time
- Medford, OR: 541-245-3992 8am – 5pm Pacific time