Secret cooling jobs with proven measuring instruments

Published 2024-01-31

Lasse Andersson likes to think a few times and create special solutions for cooling. Measurements and calibrations of instruments have been an important part of his long career. In retirement, Lasse now helps the defense industry and the military with cooling installations and measurements – often with Testo instruments from the 1990s.

– I have always been interested in specialized facilities.

Lasse Andersson notes this more than once during our conversation. We meet him at his villa in Gråbo near Lerum a few miles outside Gothenburg. Here, Lasse and his wife Eva run the company LA TestTechnik, which has existed since 1992.

But let’s start at the beginning: at a young age, Lasse trained as an electrician at the SKF ball bearing manufacturer’s vocational school (his father was a firefighter and the family lived in a villa in the industrial area). Later, Lasse also took further training in heat engineering.

He got his first job at Wållgrens Kyl, which in the 1970s was one of Sweden’s largest refrigeration companies.

– There I started my career in refrigeration and measuring things, as Lasse himself puts it.

For 15 years, Lasse installed and serviced hundreds of cooling systems in places like Sahlgrenska University Hospital, Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg and Medicinareberget (center for research, healthcare and business in medicine and biotechnology). Even then, it was often a question of specialized facilities. For example, low temperature machines that would be able to freeze blood plasma to temperatures of around 90 degrees below zero.

Test environments at institutes and universities
During a trade fair at the Swedish Fair in Gothenburg, Lasse entered a stand where the German manufacturer Weiss was showing simulation facilities for test environments in industry, healthcare and the military. Lasse established a good contact with Weiss, which resulted in him being asked to set up a subsidiary in Stockholm for the German company.

This was followed by many years of installations and measurements at plants around Sweden. These include a large number of test environments for the Rise research institute in Borås and academic institutions such as KTH (Royal Institute of Technology) in Stockholm and Linköping University.

– At Linköping University, I once did a job in a plant growth chamber. A light source was installed that would simulate natural daylight at a certain intensity for a number of hours before the ‘sun went down’ in the test environment,” says Lasse.

At the beginning of his career, there was not much interest in measurement in the industry, Lasse recalls. Neither instruments nor measurements were very sophisticated.

– It wasn’t a matter of logging and documenting measurements; you put in a sensor, got a value, wrote it down and that was that.

This changed when Lasse started working with Weiss who used and advocated Testo measuring equipment. Lasse then found out and contacted Nordtec, which at that time was already the main Swedish distributor for Testo.

Accurate measurement and documentation
Driving the development of more sophisticated and accurate measurement were pharmaceutical companies such as Astra and also many pharmacy companies. They required documentation verifying that medicines had been stored in controlled environments with constant temperatures.

When Weiss closed its Swedish subsidiary in the early 1990s, Lasse switched to representing them through his and his wife’s own company.

– Many of the Testo instruments I use today are actually from that time. And they still work perfectly well,” says Lasse.

A large black instrument case includes the testo 452, testo 601 and testo 701 for measuring temperature, humidity and pressure. These models have long since been discontinued but still deliver reliable measurements. As with any instrument, regular calibrations are important. Lasse submits his meters for calibration at Nordtec at regular intervals.

Special cooling for the radar in Jas Gripen
– This means that the meters work exactly as they should and what I measure seems to be correct. What is also positive about these instruments is that many sensors can be connected to them and that they have analog outputs, allowing the meters to be easily adapted for different measurements.

Lasse Andersson is now retired, but he doesn’t seem to have any plans to slow down and stop doing what he enjoys so much: figuring out ingenious cooling solutions. Nowadays he mainly performs more or less secret jobs at Saab and various defense facilities around the country.

This includes work on cooling radar technology in the Jas Gripen fighter plane. This technology is located in the nose of the plane and Lasse has designed a special solution that cools the radar sensors and prevents them from overheating. Lasse also works with cooling systems on mobile radar units, such as the famous Giraffe model. The tasks are varied to say the least. He installs, replaces hoses and, if necessary, installs additional pumps to ensure efficient cooling. Measuring temperature and pressure are recurring tasks.

Although Lasse likes to use his older Testo measuring instruments, he also has more modern equipment. For example, he appreciates the testo SmartProbes wireless sensors, which are easy to use and allow him to access current measurements on his mobile phone at any time. He uses these sensors for measurements inside military operation tents and communication centers (in the form of expandable containers). In these environments, there are high climate requirements in terms of temperature, airflow and light in order to conduct efficient and safe operations.

What is it that makes you dedicate a whole professional life to these cooling and measuring jobs?
– It’s far from a normal job where you walk into a pizza maker’s shop, screw together a fridge and you’re done. It is a bit more complicated than that. And this is exactly what I like. “You often have to think a bit more and come up with a solution for a particular application,” concludes Lasse, packing the well-used Testo instruments in his bag for next week’s secret military job somewhere in Sweden.