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PAL Environmental Testing Facility

The PAL Environmental Testing Facility is managed by Margaret Hyman, Sr. Lab Technician who specializes in implementing and streamlining complicated image quality and print quality measurement procedures. She has more than 12 years of experience in image quality and print quality measurement and data analysis, and over 10 years of experience in environmental testing, including ozone, UV, cool white, and materials aging.

This unique laboratory offers PAL customers and professional organizations a dedicated facility equipped for testing inks, substrates, packaging, and other graphic arts materials and equipment in a variety of environmental conditions, including a wide range of heat/cold temperatures, humidity and atmospheric pressures. Dedicated climate control and conditioning equipment enables us to accurately produce on demand a wide variety of indoor and outdoor environmental exposure conditions that could potentially have an adverse effect on your product, including:

Hot / Cold Environmental Testing – Reproduces damage caused by over-exposure to hot / cold temperatures over an extended period of time. Examples of defects that may occur with this test are color degradation, cracking, delamination, gloss change, curl, lay flatness and paper stability.

Temperature / Humidity Testing – Reproduces damage caused by over-exposure to hot / cold temperatures with increased humidity over an extended period of time. Examples of defects that may occur with this test are color degradation, cracking, delamination, gloss change, curl, lay flatness and paper stability.

Low Pressure / Altitude Testing – Vacuum chamber simulates transportation of material in a low-pressure environment. Products and their packaging can become damaged when exposed to altitude changes and other kinds of air-pressure changes.

Additional environmental testing for the effect of lighting on materials is available for specialized applications:

Q-Sun XE-3 Xenon & Q-Sun XE-1 Test – This test chamber enables testing for accelerated exposure to sunlight conditions. Examples of defects caused by excessive UV exposure may include color degradation, cracking, delamination, gloss change, and brittleness of material.

  • Tests include, but are not limited to, lightfastness, colorfastness and photostability.
  • Tests are performed in accordance to ASTM D3424, G155, G151, and ISO 12040.

QUV Accelerated Weathering – Cool White lamps test for resistance to indoor lighting. Examples of defects caused by excessive UV exposure may include color degradation, cracking, delamination, gloss change, and brittleness of material.

  • Tests include, but not limited to, lightfastness, colorfastness and photostability.
  • Tests are performed in accordance to ASTM D3424, G151 and G154.