T/CCI opens Advanced Testing Center for development of compressors, HVAC products

T/CCI Manufacturing, a supplier of compressor technology including reciprocating, swash plate, wobble plate, and variable compressor designs, has opened a customized Advanced Testing Center to meet customer specifications and validation requirements and to develop new compressor and HVAC products.

Located in Decatur, Ill., the company said the Advanced Testing Center is one of only a handful of comparable testing sites in the world and will help develop and optimize customer systems for efficiency, durability, qualit, and cost-effectiveness. The center’s dual systems have 50 kW capability and can recreate real-world conditions.

T/CCI expects the testing equipment to bring even greater value to customers by building its more than 100 years of experience with HVAC testing and compressor development located in Decatur.

“Testing in wind tunnels and over the road is really expensive — the vehicles themselves cost multi-million dollars just to build,” said T/CCI President Richard Demirjian. “With this one-of-a-kind center, we are able to test key measurables in a wide variety of conditions to see where potential problems could arise and make adjustments to designs before the first product reaches the customer.”

T/CCI can test all components of heating systems, as well as air conditioning and battery cooling. The Advanced Testing Center can test in climate conditions ranging from -40 degrees Fahrenheit to 120 degrees Fahrenheit. It also has vibration and thermal imaging capabilities to evaluate potential hot spots in the condensers. The testing center can run 24 hours a day.

“If a vehicle is too large to fit in, or it’s halfway around the world, you don’t want to have to ship it to test in a wind tunnel,” said Dick Ennis, Director of Engineering. “Now, if a customer wants some testing done, they can send us the system by air freight, and we can set it up and evaluate our product within their system—and actually handle development at that point. The Advanced Testing Center is flexible and capable of a multitude of tests that we never could have done in a wind tunnel.”

By reducing the time that vehicles need to spend in testing, the company said the new lab will allow it to more quickly and economically find problems, make changes, and bring products to market.

T/CCI is a supplier to the trucking, off-highway, specialty vehicle and transport refrigeration markets and has a global footprint spans manufacturing locations in China, Argentina, India and the United States with warehousing, sales and engineering in Illinois, Texas, China, Argentina, Ireland, Germany, Spain, India and Mexico.