Why are NIST calibration fees so high?
Our fees are high compared to commercial calibration labs, but the NIST uncertainty is smaller. The cost versus uncertainty curve gets fairly steep for very low uncertainties. For example, our price for calibrating gage blocks by mechanical comparison may be 10 times more than the cost from an industry lab. The U.S. Federal Government rules are that we fully recover all costs involved in the calibration service. For example, each size gage block has two master blocks used as references in the calibration. These master blocks are calibrated by interferometry. We maintain about 900 master blocks, measuring them on a 3-year cycle, and the cost is about one staff-year. This cost must be recovered from the customers. The measurement assurance program has a fair effort involved in the statistical process control (SPC) for calibrations and less direct expenses like those for configuration control of the computer programs, process improvement testing, and so forth. Other operating expenses are
