Tour IIA’s St. Louis Lab: Your Gateway to Testing Solutions

March 20, 2025 | < 1 min read

In the heart of the Midwest, IIA’s St. Louis testing lab got its start in the Roaring Twenties, a time when technological advancements like automobiles, telephones and electric appliances were becoming mainstream. Our lab in the Gateway City continued to keep pace with industry and technology in the decades to come.

With nearly a century of service supporting industries ranging from aerospace to amusement parks, our St. Louis lab offers diverse testing capabilities that include non-destructive, mechanical (destructive), metallurgical, chemical, and environmental, as well as calibration.

Nearly 70 strong, our St. Louis team is part of IIA’s vast network of lab facilities and field operations that span North America. With the longest history of any of our labs, St. Louis has earned a reputation for accurate, unbiased testing and fast turnaround times — in the Midwest and beyond.

Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) Services

As a trusted leader in non-destructive testing (NDT), we work with a range of devices and methodologies to ensure the optimal approach for your unique needs. Our specialties include eddy current testing, magnetic particle testing (for ferrous materials), liquid penetrant testing (for non-ferrous materials), ultrasonic and phased array testing, radiography (X-ray), and more.

Radiographic testing (Gamma or X-ray) — and increasingly, computed radiography (CR) -- is a core service at the St. Louis lab. Radiography is a time-tested technique to find defects and indications in a variety parts and components. With a wide array of applications, some memorable projects include X-raying thousands of chocolate candies to look for metal particles lost during the manufacturing process. Our team has also used computed (digital) radiography to perform forensic analysis on appliances, electric blankets and fuse boxes to determine the cause of fires. We’ve even used X-rays to reveal painted-over versions of Edgar Degas paintings to help the St. Louis Art Museum better understand how the painting evolved.

It can take hundreds of individual X-ray images, in a variety of sizes, to paint an accurate picture of internal structures. Lab personnel use a penetrameter to assess the quality of X-ray images.

The St. Louis lab uses a variety of radiation sources, including iridium and cobalt. They routinely procure new sources of radiation to ensure the strength required for the efficient production of quality images. Stringent safety measures are taken with every radiographic inspection to ensure the safety of our workers, our customers and the public.

St. Louis lab employee Wilson Utley demonstrates ground-penetrating radar (GPR) on the lab’s cement floor. Our GPR technology sends radar pulses down into the concrete to identify the presence of subsurface metal — such as tension cable, plumbing lines, electrical conduit, and rebar — up to 18” deep. Our technicians then mark the location so customers can avoid unseen hazards when drilling, cutting or digging.

Mechanical (Destructive) Testing Services

In some cases, you have to take a part, component, or material past its breaking point to learn its true limits. And that’s what our mechanical testing experts do best — break things to better understand them. Our St. Louis team has used destructive testing on a laundry list of components, including washing machines, rifles, airplanes, scooters, elevators, deer stands and seat belts.

Equipped with a variety of tools, our team can perform tensile, impact, hardness, pressure, load, hydro, fastener, and abrasion testing. We can test down to the ounce to assess everything from the holding power of an adhesive to the resilience of a rubber band used on braces. Destructive testing can be particularly beneficial for determining the strength of a weld because it allows us to observe whether the break occurs at the weld or elsewhere on the test item.

The Charpy impact machine tests the impact resistance, or toughness, of materials. The Charpy method uses a heavy pendulum capable of delivering up to 260 foot-pounds of force. The Charpy value is obtained by measuring the energy absorbed by a sample during impact.

Accurate results start with proper sample preparation. Depending on the type of test being performed, sample prep may involve cleaning, sanding, machining, or applying heat and pressure.

Calibration Services

Any measurement device, instrument or equipment may become less accurate over time. Routine calibration helps to ensure that such devices continue to measure with precision. The calibration process compares actual measurement values produced by a measuring device to an accepted standard to determine the accuracy of the instrument — and ultimately helps to prevent product defects, equipment malfunctions and safety hazards.

The temperature and humidity in our ISO 17025-accredited calibration lab are carefully controlled to ensure extreme accuracy in calibration. Our St. Louis team can measure and test torque wrenches, calipers, micrometers, and others tools and devices to a myriad of ASTM specifications and can measure down to the millionth of an inch.

Metallurgical Testing Services

Serving all industries, from aerospace to medical devices, we use metallurgical testing to verify compliance with customer requirements and industry standards. In addition, our experts can examine the microstructure of metals and provide insight into the causes of failures. Performing a failure analysis is a key step towards preventing future failures and helps navigate disputes between suppliers, manufacturers, and end users. The work done by our metallurgists also supports quality control by performing a wide variety of tests, such as corrosion analysis, coating thickness, case depth analysis, and much more.

With a resolution of nanometers, our St. Louis lab’s ThermoFisher Axia ChemiSEM allows us to zoom in on metal samples to obtain high-quality images and take accurate measurements at a very small scale. Particularly useful for failure analysis, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) allows us to examine fracture features at high magnifications (up to 15,000 times) to determine the fracture mode, such as fatigue, overload, or corrosion. We can also determine elemental compositions of very small regions or samples using Energy Dispersive X-Ray Spectroscopy (EDS).

Environmental Testing Services

Our St. Louis lab offers a world of options when it comes to environmental testing. From trace metals to phthalates and anions, nothing will escape the scrutiny of our environmental testing experts.

Along with water testing, we are equipped to analyze everything from oil and grease, metals and minerals to organics, bacteria, and more. Our Toxicity Characteristic Leaching Procedure (TCLP) leaching test identifies hazardous elements in a sample.

Our St. Louis lab is a trusted source of environmental testing for corporate, municipal and residential customers in the Midwest. We are frequently called upon to analyze storm water, drinking water, or waste water runoff/discharge; and our team has the expertise to help customers create the optimal waste management process for their company.

Chemical Testing Services

Need to know what it’s made of? What’s in there that shouldn’t be? Does it meet requirements?

Our chemistry experts can identify the chemical composition of any alloy, polymer or impurity and perform regulatory testing to determine if regulated substances, such as lead, heavy metals and phthalates, are present in acceptable concentrations. Our capabilities include trace contamination testing to identify and quantify contamination, such as chemical, residue or foreign particle.

As part of a full menu of chemical testing, we provide detailed data about the chemical and physical properties of polymers — information that can aid in quality control and product improvement. Our polymer analyses provide insight into molecular structure, weight percent, density, thermal characteristics, hardness, melt flow rate, and more.

At Industrial Inspection & Analysis, we are firm believers in the axiom that “One test is worth a thousand opinions.” And when that test is conducted by our St. Louis lab, or any IIA lab across North America, you can be sure you’re getting accurate results delivered by unbiased experts.

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Our Credentials
Our St. Louis laboratory is ISO/IEC 17025 accredited by The American Association for Laboratory Accreditation (A2LA) and certified by the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). The laboratory is also NADCAP Certified for Non-Destructive and Material Testing and the Quality Program is NADCAP AC7004 Certified. The St. Louis lab is also one of the nation’s few certified FAA Repair Stations. CE testing may overlap, allowing an experienced lab provider like IIA to save time when testing a device for both FCC and CE compliance.