i-Nalysis.com

The word is really getting out about i-Nalysis! Aerospace Engineering & Manufacturing has a nice story about how i-Nalysis can help aircraft suppliers, aerospace companies and aircraft owners know whether their parts have lead in them. Reporter Terry Costlow, who’s been writing about technology since the early ‘80s, does a great job getting at the heart of why lead-related issues are so important in the aerospace industry.

One of the best parts of our job at i-Nalysis is making X-ray fluorescence technology affordable to many of those companies for the first time.

So check out the Aerospace Engineering & Manufacturing article – and drop us a line to let us know what you think.

=Drew

Rob Spiegel’s “Lead-Free Zone” blog at Design News is a must-read for people who follow RoHS and other environmental issues facing our industry. So weren’t we happy when Rob wrote about i-Nalysis and our new X-ray fluorescence technology! Rob’s post discusses how with our XrF technology everyone – from thrift shop owners to supply chain managers and recycling plant supervisors to jewelers – can get an accurate picture of what’s in the products they’re handling. You can read what Rob had to say about i-Nalysis here.

We’re getting excited for the launch of iD-Prime so check back for more blog posts and news. As always, drop me a line if you have questions about how X-ray fluorescence technology can help your business.

=Drew

These @#$%^&* seats are too small- if only an XrF could fix THAT! I am sitting here on a flight to Atlanta, with my arms pinched to my sides (middle seat, natch) and my XrF in the overhead compartment.

Nice that these things can travel carry on. In the bad old days (OK, still even today) some XrF instruments use Radioactive Isotopes to make X-rays. Of course, we deliver the only system based on a Pyroelectric Crystal to make X-rays. And don’t they work great! What a cool thing- a little solid state crystal, rather than an isotope, or even an X-ray tube (sort of a light bulb that makes X-rays instead of visible light.)  Yes, I know, our XrF is pretty cool, but it can’t deliver more room on this overfull flight, or save a sick puppy.

But…maybe it can. Testing of animal food might be a good idea, since, like most things, we have no idea where it comes from. Last year a friend almost lost her dear dog to the melamine scare, based on the surprising revelation that the stuff was from overseas, and was never really tested! The buyers just believed that what they ordered was what they got.

What other stuff is in there? And what does “Made in the USA” mean? Are the raw materials from Indiana, or from India? Are there extenders, plasticizers, fillers, preservatives, packaging, or other materials from sources bought based on price, not where home base lies? If so, does the pet food company, buying those preservatives from an American company get what they thought it would be? Or are the raw materials for those components from yet another location or set of suppliers? In the end, what does “Made in the USA” mean? Really, it means “Made on Planet Earth”, by people we may or may not know, and with whom we do not have a relationship of trust.

And that is why we test, test, test- the difference between believing and knowing.

Testing is going mainstream, as we move into a world of globalization. It has become
increasingly difficult to say “where” a product is from, and therefore almost impossible to
know, truly KNOW for certain what it is made of, without a quick and simple XrF test.If we say a CD player is made in China, what does that really mean? Well, some of the
chips are from Viet Nam, some from Malaysia, and the case from Myan Mar. The cables
are sourced from 23 different suppliers around the world, selected entirely on price at
meeting a spec. Assembly was started in China, packaging was completed in the US, and
the CDs made in Mexico, with the warranty card printed in Vancouver.

So- where is that computer really from? And since we don’t really know the answer, the distributor
can’t really assign responsibility for its content to someone else. WE need to check, we
need to know, since ultimately we are responsible for the products we “produce”, sell,
distribute, or otherwise put into the hands of customers.

It’s our stuff, and we’ve got to test it.

What is it that makes XrF so interesting to farmers and recyclers, oilmen and electronics inspectors, toy makers and forensic dentists?It’s the ability to know what’s in your samples. That’s it. It’s a fairly simple thing, to know- REALLY know - what you have in front of you.

Or in our case, what all your people have in front of them- anywhere around the world, at any time. This may mean your own people, your vendors, or even their suppliers. And a simple web page can give you all that information, as they test, or months later, sorted by vendor, part number, date code, etc.

And knowing, as in knowing how much phosphorus is in that fertilizer, or what and how much wear metals are in that oil, is more important than ever. Since many of our customers are responsible for more than one physical location, having test data locked inside a test instrument is an impediment to Getting Stuff Done (GSD -our motto here at our humble lab)

Mass High Tech, the New England start-up newspaper (by which I mean newspaper ABOUT start-ups), has often written about the XrF industry, and about instrumentation and testing in general. The have done it again with a brilliant article on i-Nalysis, and may I say, an article graced by a most handsome and presidential-looking President (you can tell by the wrinkles in the shirt and under the eyes…).

We seem to have gone from being crackpots to being fabulous almost overnight- amazing what actually doing that impossible thing you say you can, will do for you. We are of course grateful for the interest on the part of potential customers, people who would like to spec it to their vendors for their use, renters, OEMs, and lots of other likely users (as well as newspaper folks).

Here is the article, Mass High Tech

As always, let us know if you have questions about how Elemental Analysis can work for you!

=Drew

Well, regardless of your political persuasion, there are some amazing things about tomorrow’s inauguration.

We here in our humble lab have noticed some things for which we are grateful in this inauguration as well. For one, environmental spending is already up in the 4th quarter, compared to the last several years, as EPA offices and other state and federal entities responsible for the environment are anticipating an increased budget for their efforts.

This is of course fine by us, as it means more contractors, and the agencies themselves, are interested in our products for testing soil, water, and air for inorganic contaminants.

This also means that our lower cost instrument will be a key player in this field, as this constrained economy pushes hard on all parties to stretch the available dollars. Our rentals are significantly lower priced than instruments that use X-ray tubes.

We are proud to do our part to make this a cleaner world, at a lower cost to the taxpayers (which is actually all of us!)

=Drew

Well, I got that question 3 times today.  The words were the same, but XrF is many things to many people, so it matters who is asking.

X-ray Fluorescence can “see” any inorganic elements in a sample, which means there are about 70 different elements it can see! So- you can use it to find things that SHOULDN’T be there, like Lead (Pb) in kid’s toys, or Vanadium (V) in effluent or drinking water. You can use it to make sure that what SHOULD be in things IS in there- like Chromium (Cr) in stainless steel, to keep your product from rusting, or Lead in high-reliability electronics to keep them high-reliability. (high-rel will be a post for another day…)

XrF can see very low concentrations of these elements. For the lighter ones, down near Phosphorus, they can find about a percent or so. As you move up in atomic weight, you can get low concentrations as low as 100 parts per million (PPM).  So XrF can find Lead in paint, or even the very low levels of Pb that are dangerous in toys.

So- what can XrF do?  Any time you need to know what inorganic elements you have, XrF can tell you the answers, quickly and easily.

Many people have asked us what this X-ray Fluorescence (XrF) thing is really. Here is a brief answer to that question.

XrF is a scientific technique based on a basic fact of nature- every element in this universe of ours sends back an echo- but a personally modified echo- of any X-ray that hits it. (XrF geeks say “an X-ray that impinges on the sample”- it makes them sound smart.) Each element sends back a different X-ray!

That means that Lead sends back a different energy X-ray than, say, Cadmium.  Sounds simple enough. If we shoot some X-rays at a sample we want to identify, and look at the energies of the X-rays coming back, we should be able to tell the difference between various elements- this is actually pretty cool!

There is some fine print- it doesn’t work well on light elements, since they respond with less X-rays, and the ones that come back are hard to see. So essentially this technique is best for INORGANIC materials only- if you look at our old friend from high school, the periodic table, it is organized by weight. That means we see most of the stuff on the table, generally anything heavier than, say Phosphorus.  There are things you can do to see the lighter elements- get the air out from between you sample and the instrument, for instance, so those X-rays coming back aren’t absorbed by the air, and a few other tricks. This will let you see Aluminum, Magnesium, and the like.

Over the last 5 decades XrF has evolved from a specialty lab device in a few national labs, to what we now make which is a palm-sized, industrial device. Anyone can use it, and it answers some important questions people are asking these days- “what is this stuff?”, “did my supplier send me the right thing?”, “why is this material not working in the process?”, and similar sorts of wonderings.

We can answer those questions quickly and easily- and with our new instrument, you can do it more cheaply, and with more useful information, than ever before.

If you have more questions, give us a call, we are happy to answer questions, and we look forward to working with you to answer your materials questions!

Yes, I quit my job. It’s a strange thing to do, given the times. I had been working for a company that makes X-ray Fluorescence (XrF) analyzers, actually really good XrF units, but saw a way to move this industry- and its customers (YOU!) to the next generation product.

At that point, I went to a bunch of industry experts, PhD’s, very smart guys, and all of them, no exception, told me it couldn’t be done. They said that the next generation product I envisioned, using a new technology called pyroelectric crystals, could never work. “We make X-rays with TUBES” they all told me, “not CRYSTALS”. Some even laughed at me. (OUCH!)

Now that it actually works, and works so well, I suppose I should throw in an evil laugh here- BWAH HA HA- but really it was pretty intimidating at the time. Here were a number of smart people in the industry, telling me that my idea was ridiculous!

Just because I am a tenacious- OK, stubborn – guy, I decided to test this out. I begged, borrowed, and otherwise snagged parts from anywhere I could, and built one in my basement during the weekends. I tested some old tin/lead solder and a piece of copper sheet, and could actually identify Copper and Tin and Lead!!

This thing actually worked! It was not beautiful, with wires hanging out everywhere, made of Radio Shack parts and borrowed cast-offs, sparks shooting out, black smoke billowing out the back, but it worked! (Yes, I did light my workbench on fire at one point, but everyone is OK, and the insurance claim is settled…)

Well, having everyone tell me it couldn’t be done probably was a favor- that’s what made me push forward and turn this into a real product that works, and works beautifully. It really is a neat little thing, smaller, lower cost, better in so many ways.

It has been an adventure…and I look forward to sharing the next steps with you in this space. Check back for more info on XrF, on testing, on Pyroelectrics, on Tibetan holiday practices (just kidding) and other updates!