Certificates are easy to photograph and hard to earn. Here are ours, with the standard, the grade and the certificate number, so your compliance team can verify rather than take our word for it.
What travels with your shipment
- Declaration of conformity for the destination market
- Packing list with model, function, finish, handing and carton quantity
- Photographic record of the packing configuration
- Test reports for the certified series, on request, per shipment
Salt spray performance
Finish durability is tested to ASTM B117. Plated finishes (SN, SC, CP, SS) are held to 96 hours, coated finishes (MB, ORB, WHP) to 48 hours, and living brass finishes (PB, AB, AC) to 24 hours. Coastal and high-humidity installations are quoted separately — tell us the site and we will specify accordingly rather than let a standard finish fail in eighteen months.
Care and claims
Clean with a soft dry cloth. Solvents, abrasives and acidic cleaners void the finish cover. To make a claim, quote the order code and the shipment date; replacement parts are supplied ex-works.
What is actually in the test lab
The lab is on the assembly floor, because a test result is only useful if the line can act on it within the hour.
- Neutral salt spray cabinet — continuous 5% NaCl fog at 35 °C, run to ASTM B117.
- Cycle rigs — motorised benches for lever and knob chassis, plus a deadbolt rig throwing against a strike.
- X-ray fluorescence analyser — plating thickness at lever tip, rose face and rose underside, because those three points never read the same.
- Torque gauge — key rotation, thumb-turn and lever return force.
- Dimensional bench — height gauge, calipers, pin and thread gauges, and go / no-go gauges for spindle bore, backset centres and faceplate cut-outs.
- Coating tests — cross-hatch adhesion and pencil hardness, where the failure is peeling, not corrosion.
- Key bench — bitting verification, pin-stack and key-retraction checks.
How a salt spray class maps to a finish
Salt spray hours rank finishes against each other under one repeatable condition. They are not a life expectancy in years, and a supplier quoting one number for every finish has tested nothing.
| Plated — SN, SC, CP, SS | 96 h to ASTM B117. The safe choice for exposed entrances, humid climates and coastal sites. |
|---|---|
| Coated — MB, ORB, WHP | 48 h. Pigment over a plated base. Excellent indoors and on sheltered entrances; wears at the thumb-turn and lever tip first. |
| Living brass — PB, AB, AC, SB | 24 h. These finishes patinate by design. The low figure describes intent, not a defect. |
Pass criteria are read against the rating scale, not by eye: time to first white corrosion and time to first red rust are logged separately on the batch record.
What a cycle test proves, and what it does not
One cycle is a full operation of the lock: latch retracted, released, returned, plus rotation of the key where the function has one. Depending on product and grade, our rigs run between 100,000 and 800,000 cycles. The count is set by the standard, not by us.
A completed cycle test proves that springs, chassis, spindle and latch tail survive that many operations under controlled load, and that the lock still meets its operating force and latch projection limits at the end. It does not prove finish durability, simulate a slammed door or a misaligned strike, or say anything about a door that binds. Mechanism and surface are tested and reported separately.
How batch records work
Every run carries a traveller card from ingot to carton: zinc lot and mill certificate, casting machine and shot parameters, the first-article check that released the run, hourly in-process samples, plating tank and bath date, XRF readings, assembly line and shift, and the AQL 2.5 pre-shipment result. The batch number is printed on the carton label, so a label sent to us two years later still identifies the plating bath and who signed the first article. Records are held for five years.
Documents that ship with an order
- Declaration of conformity for the destination market
- Packing list with model, function, finish, handing, quantity, batch number and weights
- Photographic record of the packed configuration and carton markings
- Test reports for the certified series, on request
- Third-party inspection report, where booked
Booking a third-party inspection
Appoint SGS, Bureau Veritas, TÜV, Intertek or your own inspector. We do not charge for access, and the booking need not go through us.
- Give us seven days notice of the window and the booking reference.
- State the AQL levels. Ours is AQL 2.5 general; ask for 1.5 on critical characteristics at order stage and the line runs to it.
- Goods are presented 100% produced and packed, palletised, two working days before the container is booked.
- The inspector gets the batch records, the drawing pack and a bench with a door blank.
- If the lot fails we rework or re-sort and pay for the re-inspection.
What an ISO 9001 audit actually covers
Our certificate is ISO 9001:2015, no. 130590, valid to 17 June 2027. It does not certify the product; it certifies the system that makes the product repeatable. Surveillance runs annually and full recertification every three years. The auditor works through document and record control, management review minutes, the internal audit programme, calibration certificates for every gauge listed above, control of non-conforming product, corrective action files, supplier evaluation, training records and complaint handling. Findings are graded major or minor and closed with evidence.
We send the certificate and its scope statement to anyone who asks. Scope is the part that matters — a certificate excluding your product line is decoration.
When a defect is found after shipment
- Containment first. Send the order code, shipment date and batch number with photographs of the item, the defect close up and the carton label. Within one business day we say whether to hold the remaining stock.
- Batch trace. We pull the traveller card and retained samples and establish whether the fault is one carton, one shift or one plating bath.
- Root cause. Written, with the containment action, the cause, the fix on the line and the check that proves it held.
- Remedy. Replacement parts, a rework kit to site, a credit note, or a contribution to local labour — agreed in writing before anything ships.
We do not ask customers to freight defective goods back to China to prove a claim. Photographs and the batch number start it.
