We design a ton of parts for our kits, and we make quite a few of them using our Laser CNC. For some parts however, we contract outside companies to turn our designs into reality. Working with different companies can have pitfalls – including not getting the material that you were promised.

So what’s a team to do when they suspect they’re getting shafted by a manufacturer? Test! In this case we used Boedeker.com’s Burn Test Chart to help us figure out what kind of plastic we had on our hands. Between the burn chart and some known plastics, we were able to figure out the that we were in fact getting the wrong plastic for our grippers.

And as a friendly reminder: be smarter than us and take safety precautions when playing testing with fire: you don’t want to end up like Matt in the video below.