The Bureau of Engraving and Printing (BEP) located in Washington, DC has Preventative Maintenance and Calibration Service requirement for the Horizontal Tensile Tester. The Horizontal Tensile Tester is required to perform the tensile test suitable for testing tensile strength of film, sheet, paper, paperboard, etc. The BEP requires the equipment to perform tensile strength testing for papers that are frequently handled such as currency (bank note) paper, non-distinctive banknote paper and miscellaneous materials. The Tensile Strength Test is performed according to TAPPI method T 494. Tensile Strength is the maximum load that a material can support without fracture when being stretched, divided by the original cross-sectional area of the material.

The equipment will be used to test the paper under certain conditions and/or to test the physical properties of Distinctive Currency Paper, non-distinctive paper, and various other materials to determine if they meet specification requirements necessary to perform successfully on printing presses, to manufacturer currency notes acceptable to our customers, and for various other uses in the daily operation of manufacturing the currency notes and other products. This is being done to manufacturer products that are acceptable to our customers. The test equipment is used at the Bureau of Engraving DCF Facility in Washington DC. The new equipment and the Preventative Maintenance and Calibration Services will ensure that the equipment can be operated in optimum condition on any business day to deliver a product or analysis data supporting multiple projects. The Preventative Maintenance and Calibration Service is to be conducted annually to ensure the reliability and reproducibility of results when performing the Horizontal Tensile Test. See Attachment A – Performance Work Statement (PWS).

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