Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
NIST

NIST is the National Institute of Standards and Technology, a physical science laboratory that is part of the U.S. Department of Commerce. It was founded in 1901 and is one of the nation’s oldest physical science laboratories. Its main purpose and mission is to develop and maintain measurement standards. As part of that mission, NIST provides certified standard reference materials (SRMs) allowing science and industry to achieve more accurate measurements.

A NIST certificate is a document that certifies that your product has been tested against reference standards and/or tested with NIST-traceable instruments and that it meets or exceeds its specifications. A NIST certificate states that the product was found to be within its stated tolerance of accuracy. It also documents the environmental conditions at the time of testing, which equipment or standard reference materials were used, and some NIST certificates provide the actual test data as well.

A NIST traceable product is a product that was tested with equipment that has an unbroken chain of traceability to NIST standards. That means that every calibration instrument used for NIST certification has to have a valid NIST certificate itself, which may have been obtained by comparing its calibration against another NIST traceable instrument and so on, eventually leading back to a standard reference material certified by NIST. Instruments used for NIST certification must get tested and re-certified at regular intervals, typically annually.

Comparing measurements of a test unit against a reference material is the preferred method of verification since it eliminates the measurement uncertainty that comes with a chain of traceable instruments. An example is the ice point of 0°C, established with a temperature controlled ice bath and used for calibrating or testing thermometers. However, the practical use of SRMs is often limited, and NIST traceable instruments have to be used instead to characterize the test unit at multiple points across its measurement range.

Most often, NIST certificates are requested for regulatory compliance purposes. For example, restaurants or food banks may be required to have a NIST certificate for the thermometer they use to test the temperature of food.

Some industries may require NIST certificates for their instruments to meet the documentation requirements of ISO compliance. Or scientists may wish to maximize the measurement accuracy for a critical experiment, and having a NIST certificate with test data available gives them more detailed information on the measurement error of their instrument.

You may also want a NIST certificate to simply know that your unit was tested and found to be accurate before it was shipped.

No, we are not. However, we are well aware of the structural, process and management requirements outlined in the ISO 17025 documentation and follow its guidelines to make sure our test and quality control system produces accurate and consistent results and all data and records are stored securely and with backups. Also, all of our NIST traceable test instruments are calibrated by an ISO 17025 accredited laboratory.

In some cases, regulations may require you to obtain a NIST certificate from an ISO 17025 accredited laboratory. If that applies to you, you need to contact a third party calibration lab that is accredited under ISO 17025 to get your product NIST certified.

Currently, we only provide NIST certificates for our infrared thermometers.