No Room For Error

by Dave Truman, Business Writer, News Herald 5-30-02

▀ For Mentor firm, calibration is key

Keith Kokal is a rather precise fellow.

His climate-controlled work environment must constantly be kept at exactly 68 degrees and between 25 and 45 percent relative humidity. If the power goes off and the air conditioning cuts out, Kokal and his six employees are forced to stop what they are doing and wait until the required temperature and humidity levels are restored. Of course, it isn’t Kokal who requires such a finite climate range, but the steel gauge blocks, calipers and other indicators of length, height and perpendicularity he calibrates.

Kokal is senior Metrologist and manager of Micro Laboratories, Inc., a highly regarded and growing calibration services company at 7158 Industrial Park Boulevard, Mentor. The climate control is necessary because metals, ceramics, and other materials grow and shrink under variant conditions.

Most manufacturers require their measurements to be accurate to within 1/10,000 of an inch (0.0001), Kokal said. Micro Labs calibrates to within a millionth (0.000001) of an inch.

For 15 years, Micro Labs has provided dimensional calibration services using the same standards as the industry’s bellwether, the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
“Because of calibration, parts that are manufactured in Ohio and shipped to Michigan can be assembled with parts that are manufactured in California, and they fit,” Kokal said.
Manufacturers send gauge blocks to Micro Labs for calibration about once a year to ensure that, for example, their measurement of an inch really is an inch. The blocks are then used to calibrate micrometers and other instruments in-house. Kokal became interested in metrology after years of working on shop floors. “I was in a (job) where I needed to send out equipment to get it repaired and calibrated,” he said. “The repair wasn’t a problem, but finding people to calibrate it to my satisfaction, after a decade of experience in the industry, (was another story.)”

The quality of calibration available in Northeast Ohio at the time was so poor that Kokal took a week’s vacation from his job as quality assurance manager of a local tool and die and aerospace manufacturer to visit the NIST facility in Gaithersburg, Md. He liked what he saw so much during his impromptu trip, where he was allowed to observe NIST Metrologist at work, that he began to set up a similar lab soon after returning to Ohio. Kokal said he bought the same equipment, built his lab to the same dimensions and studied NIST’s procedures.

Paul Matthews, former assistant professor of technology at Lakeland Community College, began using Micro Labs for hands-on training of mechanical engineering students in 1993, a partnership that still exits. He said Kokal tends to be on the cutting edge of the industry in Northeast Ohio and is well known in manufacturing quality circles. “He is one of the top performers in the industry,” Matthews said. “Keith is an excellent resource for Lake County.”

In 1998, Micro Labs became the first dimensional calibration lab in Northeast Ohio to achieve accreditation from the American Association for Laboratory Accreditation, or A2LA.

Today Micro Labs has 1,500 customers centered in Northeast Ohio, but spreading around the world. Kokal said contacts who have changed jobs over the years have helped with referrals.
Kokal recently expanded Micro Labs from 3,000 to 5,000 square feet and the company is building two new labs in preparation for the addition of torque equipment, pressure gauge, and electrical equipment calibration capabilities. Kokal said he already has plans to bring on one additional employee and more could follow as the two new labs get up to speed.

To contact Micro Laboratories Inc. in Mentor, call (440) 918-0001.