Strain Measurement Devices has two very different state-of-the-art facilities. Explore both our Connecticut location as well as the Chedburgh and the processes that make them one of a kind.

Strain Measurement Devices – USA

Completed in 2008, Strain Measurement Devices’ headquarters in Wallingford, CT was designed and built to serve as a role model for corporate eco-friendly construction.

Structure and Geothermal System: Containing one of Connecticut’s largest industrial geothermal heating and cooling systems, and featuring double insulated, inert gas filled picture windows and skylights, every employee is provided with sunlight and a natural view from their work-space. SMD’s employees participate in energy efficient manufacturing and building use practices.

Land: The Wallingford facility is sited on old farm land, with apple trees, forest, and gorge. Our site’s impervious surface coverage is limited to just over 10%. Cut grass is minimal, therefore much of the site is forest or a meadow mix of wildflowers and tall grass.

Water Management: Roof runoff is stored in a storm water cistern and meets with runoff from the parking lot to feed a man-made wetland in the front of the SMD building. The water is buffered and treated by the indigenous plants on the wetland, then flows into a small man-made pond capable of retaining a 100 year flood event. This system prevents flooding and downstream erosion, causing  improvements to the water quality in the gorge stream.

Wildlife: The environmentally friendly design practices allow the land to remain a natural habitat for diverse species. Here you can enjoy watching woodchucks, turkeys, chipmunks, robins, and rabbits on the orchid lawn; herons and frogs in the wetlands; deer, cardinals, and hawks in the forest; hummingbirds, woodpeckers, chickadees, grosbeaks, nuthatches, jays, and titmice at the birdfeeders overlooking the gorge. SMD’s corporate headquarters was built in partnership with the Connecticut Department of Economic & Community Development and the City of Wallingford. Design Architecture: David Kilgore, Geothermal Design: John Sima, Sire Planning: Criscuolo Engineering, Construction: Pinney Construction Corp.

Strain Measurement Devices (Ltd. & Inc.) cares about the environment and works with customers, suppliers, and third parties to achieve compliance with WEEE and RoHS where applicable.

• WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive), an initiative to correctly and responsibly control the disposal of standalone electronic equipment sold in the European Union, is an important program applicable to stand-alone products. Currently, SMD does not provide standalone electric equipment. WEEE requires producers of electronic and electrical equipment to pay for the cost associated with recycling at the time of disposal, covering a wide range of electronic products. WEEE was enacted in an effort to avoid waste electronics into landfills, encourage eco-design, reuse and recycling through producer responsibility.
• RoHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive) bans the presence of specified hazardous substances in certain electronic/electrical equipment and was placed on the EU market after July, 2006, in conjunction with WEEE. In July 2011, the European Union published the ROHS2 (Recast Directive) Restrictive Substances:
  • Lead (0.1%)
  • Mercury (0.1%)
  • Cadmium (0.01%)
  • Hexavalent Chromium (0.1%)
  • Polybrominated Biphenyis (0.1%)
  • Polybrominated Dihenyl Ethers (PBDE) (0.1%)

Most, if not all, of Strain Measurement Devices’ products are not subject to the RoHS Directive. SMD provides RoHS compliant products to our customers as needed. Most of our standard product lines are compliant to the RoHS. If you have specific needs or questions, please feel free to contact us. REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorization & Restriction of Chemicals) is a European Community Regulation related to the safe use and identification of chemicals (Regulation EC number 1907/2006). This movement came to action in June 2007 with the goal of providing protection of the environment and human health through better and early identification of the intrinsic properties of chemical substances and improving former European Union chemical legislation by replacing approximately 40 individual pieces of legislation and harmonizing with remaining legislation. This new legislation shifts the responsibility for the control and safety of chemicals from government authorities to industry and created the European Chemicals Agency to act as a central coordinator. Importing and downstream user requirements are not applicable to SMD products.  

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Strain Measurement Devices Ltd – UK

SMD Ltd was originally setup in 1979 to research and develop simple sputtered thin film force sensors and now boasts a state of the art thin film processing facility based in Chedburgh, England manufacturing a huge array of force and pressure sensor products for many applications. Chedburgh which is located in the Suffolk countryside a few miles from the historic market town of Bury St Edmunds, famous for its impressive abbey ruins and their adjoining gardens. Once a great monastery founded in about 633, the abbey was built around a shrine to Saint Edmund, which for centuries was a point of pilgrimage for peasants, kings, and everyone in between.

The site where SMD Ltd is located was a former military airfield, opened in 1942. By 1944 the airfield was equipped with three concrete runways; three glider and one B1 type aircraft hangars, with temporary accommodation for personnel. It had been established as a temporary bomber base, used mainly by squadrons flying Short Stirling bomber aircraft until 1945 (214 and 620 squadrons, 1653 Conversion Unit) and later Avro Lancaster bombers (218 Squadron). After the 2^nd world war the Lancaster’s were deployed to ferry food supplies to liberated Holland. In 1945 Polish transport units 301 and 304 Squadrons used Chedburgh, until being disbanded in 1946.