PUT THROUGH THEIR PACES
Lehigh Valley Underwriters Laboratories tests hundreds of products — and even the containers they’re shipped in
Inside the Lehigh Valley’s Underwriters Laboratories facility, engineers test many products — even how Christmas packages withstand the shock of shipping and handling during the holiday season.
“This is a drop tower,” engineer Josh Dudash said, standing near a tall pole with an attachment about midway up for a carton to rest before it’s dropped. “This does very similar things that your postman does when he delivers your package.”
Most people associate Underwriters Laboratories — a nearly 125-year-old global company known for its familiar red logo encircling the UL letters — as a pre-eminent certified-testing agency, particularly in testing the safety and reliability of lights and electrical cords. But the company, which is based in Northbrook, Ill., and has had operations in the Lehigh Valley since 2010, conducts hundreds of other product evaluations.
The 24 workers at the local UL, a 38,000-square-foot office building off Interstate 78 and Route 100 in Upper Macungie Township, do performancebased testing for other businesses, said Zach Mooney, the facility’s engineering leader.
“We don’t get to do the fire [safety] stuff here,” Mooney said during a tour Nov. 14 for the Western Lehigh and East Penn chambers of commerce. Instead, he said, the local facility tests lighting products as its core business, and also certifies products ranging from appliances to birdhouses to coffee cups.
Mooney said the company examines the security of products transported by national e-commerce and logistics companies. Its vibration tests show whether a package can withstand drops or mishandling. Those companies — Mooney said he could not divulge names — can use the drop test to determine how packages are handled from loading docks to their final destinations. The testing meets standards set by the International Safe Transit Association, he said.
During another highlight from the tour, Dudash showed off perhaps UL’s smallest testing tool, a hand-held, wand-like item called a “colorimeter,” that measures color coordinates to prevent counterfeiting.
“You can use it on packaging and labels, but really where we see it a lot is
retailers’ logos,” Dudash said.
The local UL also tests light bulbs in various environmental chambers, one of which can get as hot as 185 degrees, Mooney said. Meanwhile in UL’s photometric lab, testing on giant spheres measures a light’s distribution and color characteristics, engineer Jeff Lockner said. If a company says its bulbs emit a “warm white” or “blue white,” it’s UL’s job to verify those features, he said. Mooney said UL’s environmental chambers can also be used to certify appliances, food and beverages, including beer created by local brewers. “So there’s a lot of opportunities for us to do testing with a lot of different industries that we were never able to do before here,” he said, noting the company has added new testing labs since its opening.
The cost of testing can range from $200 to $2,000, he said, and testing generally takes between three and five days.
Mooney, of Lower Nazareth Township, began with UL about two years before the company acquired Luminaire Testing Laboratory of Allentown in 2010. The owners of Luminaire Testing, which in 1989 became the first business client in Allentown’s Bridgeworks Enterprise Center, eventually launched a new company in 2015 and moved back to Bridgeworks, according to Anthony Durante, program manager for the south Allentown business incubator, part of Allentown Economic Development Corp.
While safety certification has been UL’s bread and butter for generations, the company began expanding into performance testing about the time it acquired Luminaire Testing, Mooney said. UL has acquired more than 50 companies since 2010, with the majority dealing in product testing.
“They wanted established organizations that work … on performance-based metrics,” Mooney said of his employer. “They went to find experts, which is why they came to the Lehigh Valley.”