Calibration or Verification? What terminology to use

[Manasa]

Hi All!I have three questions today.
1.)Our company has gauge blocks and pin gauges bought in 2014 with the certificates of calibration hardly used.I have heard they can be used as gauges to verify other measuring devices (vernier,screw gauge) for about 10 years.We hardly used them.Is it true?
2.)If i can do point 1 can i call my measuring devices as calibrated for QMS (ISO 9001) or they are only verified?
3.)If they are only verified but not calibrated am I still in Compliance with ISO's minimum requirements?
My main problem is finding difficulty with what terminology to use when I follow this procedure of verifying against calibrated device
Since, we still are developing QMS should only verification against calibrated device be our scope ?
Please help.Thanks much in advance.

 

[Jim Wynne]

This is a subject that has been discussed many times here, so a search will give you a lot of information. In general, you can use devices such as gage blocks and pin gages for internal calibration purposes so long as there is traceability of them to national or international standards. The certificates that come with purchased devices are seldom useful for such purposes, and you should probably use an outside calibration service.

As far as "calibration" and "verification" is concerned, calibration is a form of verification, but some verification might not rise to the level of formal calibration with traceability, uncertainty information and other results that might be required.