This is my "kick-off" posting in the Know Your Metals blog! Thanks for taking the time to read!
Metals are a common manufacturing material and surround us everywhere. Manufacturers and producers are constantly on the lookout for new alloys, new uses and new ways of producing products that enhance value, reduce material costs and improve quality. Metals are a global product, coming from all corners of the globe. KNOWING your metals has never been more important than it is now, with the increase in competition and the prevalence of material fraud and falsification.
FRAUD!?! Yes, plain as day, there are shady vendors out there who will gladly provide a certification sheet to meet your specifications, but if you are not verifying that the certification is for YOUR materials, what is that certification worth?
Intentionally or by mistake, metal suppliers are sending materials that may not measure up to your standards. Worse yet, if the wrong materials make their way into your products, they can corrupt your process, damage tools and cause product quality issues or failures. The damage to your reputation in the market can be irreparable. Here's a case in point:
I went to a manufacturer of metal parts to demonstrate my handheld XRF analyzer. We talked about the instrument, analyzed a few samples and the owner was fairly impressed, but did not see that he had any problems or indeed a real need...UNTIL... We came to a sheet of stainless steel supplied by his customer, the US Army no less, to make some kind of mounting brackets. The specifications were for 316 Stainless.. when I analyzed the sheet it was 304 Stainless. "That can't be!" the owner exclaimed "I got that from the Army to make the brackets! Check it again!" A re-check did not change the facts: he had 304 SS. He was obviously concerned and had no idea how such a thing could happen. I took a walk around the sheet and noticed a small, paper tag... Ah ha! The root of the mix-up! Apparently, when the shipment was loaded,the stock-person saw the tag and said "Ok, 316 SS" but what the tag actually SAID was 3/16" SS. Yes, a very simple and innocent mistake, but detrimental to the quality of the product! And without incoming inspection, the Army would receive inferior parts that could possibly impact someone's survival! So would you say an inspection program is necessary?
What do you do? The best and clearest answer is to validate and verify your incoming materials through an inspection program that includes elemental analysis. Elemental analyzers for this purpose are readily available and are becoming very economical. Capabilities that once were only available in equipment costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, can now be obtained for a fraction of that cost.
(My company, Verichek, offers a variety of these analyzers: http://www.verichek.net/)
The most popular technologies (and easiest for users to employ!) are x-ray fluorescense and optical emission spectrometry. They work based on the fact that under certain circumstances, metals (and indeed, all elements) give off photons when properly excited, and the "wavelength" or energy of the emitted photons is very specific to the element that generated it. By measuring the energy of the photons, we can tell what element it came from, and by "counting" the photons and comparing them to the total number we detect, we can tell how much of each element is in the sample. The differences between these two technologies is the method of excitement: x-rays in one case, an electrical arc in the other, and the way it is detected: a multi-channel solid-state detector for x-ray spectrometers, single channel photomultipliers or CCD elements for optical emission spectrometers.
Both of these technologies allow for a high degree of certainty in verifying the composition of your materials and matching them to the certifications.
If you aren't inspecting your incoming materials, what are you risking?
Verichek Instruments
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