The use of automated processes, regardless of industry or application, has become nothing out of the ordinary. The world of materials testing is no different. We find ourselves in the midst of a technological revolution that is seemingly nowhere near approaching boundaries. But how did we get here, where are we going, and is automation always optimal?

The automation of materials testing has been an evolutionary process. The task of automatically feeding standard specimens into universal testing machines has been in place for decades—at least as far back as the 1980s. In those days, this was a solution mainly confined to steel plants producing sheet metal for automotive applications, which required that each coil be tested prior to shipment. The volume of testing was large enough that even back then investments in automation were justified. In addition, studies showed that the scatter of test results was significantly reduced, an important feature when meeting tight automotive standards.