My tub faucet is dripping right now. Not a really rapid drip, but enough to partially fill the tub over the course of the day. Environmentalists would be unhappy with me.
The problem is, I already tried to fix it once. I ordered and replaced the faucet cartridge with a brand new one, only to have it start leaking by almost immediately.
I am not sure what is wrong with the darn thing.
So, I am playing phone tag with the plumbing company right now, and have to get a professional to figure it out and stop the drip.
I was talking with a possible client today, and found a similarity with what I was telling the gentleman.
He mentioned that when it comes to frac sand testing, doing an internal sieve analysis was fairly straightforward and easy, but doing frac sand specific crush testing (and getting meaningful results) was tough.
Yes, sir, I told him. Ain’t that the truth. Crush testing is a difficult thing to perfect, honestly.
There are several reason why it’s so darn tough to do frac sand crush testing correctly, and here are just a few of the reasons:
(1) The loading of the crush cylinder is very specific, and has to be done a very certain way, usually with very specialized equipment (for instance, how fast or slow you load the cell is critical)
(2) Sample preparation is very important … even if a client sends us sized material, we have found that even the sieve tolerances can contribute to error if we don’t use our sieves to carefully size the crush test material
(3) The technician doing the crush testing must apply the load at an exact rate, and not exceed a set stress when doing the hold time on the crush test. This takes lots of practice to perfect
(4) Even the placement of the crush cylinder and piston inside the hydraulic press is very important to getting accurate crush test results
(5) Technician experience is key … each technician must not only have their results match up (you do the crushing at least 3 times at each stress), but we need to have the crush test results match between technicians … this way we know that we are getting both precision AND accuracy (yes there is a difference!)
Those are just some of the reasons it’s best to leave frac sand crush testing to the professionals (which we are, humbly, of course! :^)
If you just need a sieve analysis, there is probably someone local near you that can do that. Just make sure they use meaningful sieve sizes when they do your sieve.
But, when you need frac sand crush testing done, it’s best to call a professional.
We can be the lab to do that for you.
We won’t, however, try to fix your tub faucet!
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