Quality Control & Laboratory Testing Equipment

Live Demonstration of IKA’s Rotavisc Viscometer

Live demonstration of IKA’s Rotavisc Viscometer

Kevin Mann
Senior Sales Manager
IKA England

IKA’s new Rotavisc Viscometers are capable of measuring the viscosity of a variety of samples such as resins, coatings and gels. With modern features, a 10 year warranty and UK based service the Rotavisc is a reliable lab partner. Join us for this webinar where we will be showcasing the Rotavisc and talking through the main advantages it can bring to your lab.

Press Releases

IKA World Market Leader – Again!

IKA world market leader – again!

/// Survey confirms leading role in laboratory, analytical and process technology

Staufen, 01/21/20 – IKA is once again listed in the world market leader index. A recent survey by the University of St.Gallen confirmed the performance and global presence of IKA as the global frontrunner in the laboratory, analytical and process technology. 

IKA, with its headquarters in Staufen, operates branches in nine countries on three continents and sells its products in more than 160 countries. As such, for several years, they have fulfilled the challenging criteria required in order to be officially nominated as a world market leader. In order to be listed in the famous index, a company must hold the highest or second-highest market share, achieve an annual revenue of more than 50 million Euros, of which more than half must be generated abroad and must be active on at least three continents. This well-respected world market leader index is drawn up by the University of St.Gallen, together with the Akademie Deutscher Weltmarktführer [Academy of German World Market Leaders] (ADWM) by means of an objective and transparent process, and is published every year in the “Wirtschaftswoche” (Business Week) magazine.

The world market leader title is the crowning glory of a commitment that starts at the product level. IKA places great emphasis on the fact that working with its products should be intuitive, effective and convenient for its end-users. For this reason, the development focus is on design; which has been a source for other awards, with the most recent being the German Design Award for the IKA PETTE product range. In addition, the world market leader from Baden is proud to be a reliable partner for their customers throughout the manufacturing chain: starting with the products for research in the laboratory, to the machines for marketable mass production.

Learn how to meet your SCIP Database requirements with Yordas’ new e-learning course

Are you a producer, importer or supplier of articles based in the EU? Did you know that from 5th January 2021, products containing SVHC on the REACH Candidate List will have to be registered in the new SCIP database?

Yordas Group have recently launched an e-learning course titled: A Practical Guide to the SCIP Database. The course will show you how to create a SCIP-compatible dataset and comply with your obligations.

The idea behind SCIP is that to successfully develop a circular economy and enable recycling, hazardous chemicals must be removed from materials. Therefore, if you are a producer, importer or supplier of articles based in the EU, you will probably have obligations to notify information to SCIP.

The course is hosted by Yordas’ SCIP expert Dr Sandra Meijer and includes practical exercises and demonstrations of the IT systems for the SCIP database. By completing this course, you will gain the knowledge, skills and insight required to meet your obligations under SCIP.

Enrol in the course now to be ready for the January 2021 deadline: https://www.yordasinsight.eu/courses/A-Practical-Guide-to-the-SCIP-database

More information about SCIP Database: https://www.yordasgroup.com/scip-database

Measure Thin Gold & Palladium Coatings on PCB Boards

As the electronics industry makes use of ever thinner coatings, manufacturers increase their demands on measuring technologies to provide reliable parameters for product monitoring. One example is the Au/Pd/Ni/Cu/printed circuit board system with coating thicknesses for Au and Pd of just a few nm. For monitoring the quality of these coating systems, X-ray fluorescence instruments have established themselves as the measurement method of choice.

The thinner the coatings, the more important it becomes to select a suitable detector. Table 1 shows a comparison of results from FISCHERSCOPE® X-RAY instruments fitted with a proportional counter tube, PIN diode and silicon drift detector (SDD), respectively.

50 nm Au 24 nm Pd
DETEKTOR TYPE Standard
deviation
Coefficient of variance Standard
deviation
Coefficient of variance
PROPORTIONAl COUNTER TUBE (0,2 MM APERTURE) 2.2 nm 4.3 % 3 nm 13 %
PIN DETECTOR (1 MM APERTURE) 0.9 nm 1.8 % 1.2 nm 4.8 %
SDD DETECTOR (1 MM APERTURE) 0.2 nm 0.4 % 0.5 nm 2.1 %

 

Table 1. Various types of detectors and their corresponding achievable standard deviations and variation coefficients

As illustrated in Table 1 above, the SDD’s significantly superior repeatability precision allows for the reliable measurement of even very thin Au and Pd coatings.

The trueness is also better for instruments with SDD because the high energy resolution of the usable signal is less susceptible to influence from the background or adjacent fluorescence lines.

The FISCHERSCOPE® X-RAY XDV®-SDD measurement system is equipped with SDD, allowing for the quick and repeatable determination of extremely thin Coatings.

Proper handling of the fluorescence signal generated by the substrate material is also more important with thinner coatings. While a general subtraction of the background signal does improve the repeatability precision, it can also introduce errors into the results. The evaluation software WinFTM® therefore explicitly allows the composition of the substrate material to be taken into account with every measurement.

Your local contact person for FISCHER products will be happy to assist you in selecting a suitable X-ray fluorescence instrument for measuring Au/Pd coatings on printed circuit boards – FISCHERSCOPE® X-RAY XDL® with proportional counter tube, XDAL® with PIN detector, or XDV®- SDD with SDD detector.
Learn more by following the link:
https://fischerinstrumentation.co.uk/measure-thin-gold-and-palladium-coatings-on-pcb-boards/

 

New Datacolor® Paint and Coatings Industry Guide

Many industries need to accurately measure, communicate and consistently reproduce colours. Effective colour management is important to business success for a number of reasons:

  • Colour consistency is associated with high quality
  • Colour can improve the safety and usability of products and environments
  • Colour problems can create unnecessary production expenses and delays
  • Colour management can help reduce environmental impact

 

In the new Datacolor® industry guide, the reader will find all they need to know about colour management and challenges in getting colour right. This free guide can be useful for anyone who works with colour. Get your guide now at https://bit.ly/34bpZwE

New environmentally-friendly recirculating chiller

/// RC 2 GREEN saves not only on operating costs, but also tons of CO2

Staufen, 14 September 2020 – IKA extends its range of recirculating chillers with the addition of the powerful and environmentally-friendly RC 2 GREEN basic and control models. The new devices combine a natural coolant with the tried and tested demand-controlled compressor technology. The result: Brilliant energy-efficiency, CO2 savings from the very first hour of operation and a reduction in operating costs.

Plant 163 trees or choose the RC 2 GREEN: You can save up to 4 tons of CO2 over a period of ten years using the new circulation cooler as compared to conventional equipment. This corresponds to a return flight from Frankfurt to New York. IKA achieves this significant reduction in the CO2 footprint as a result of the environmentally-friendly and natural coolant R 290 and the energy-efficient compressor technology.

The coolant R 290 is classed as a pure hydrocarbon. It does not damage the ozone layer and has only a slight greenhouse potential. In addition, it has very good thermodynamic properties and promises a long service life for the recirculating chiller, even with future utilization requirements. Combination with the demand-regulated compressor in the RC 2 GREEN achieves a cooling capacity of 800 Watt and a minimum temperature of -30 °C. Not only is this good for the environment, but it also saves from 150 to 250 Euros per year of operation, calculated over a ten year period.

Both variants of the device are developments of the RC 2 recirculating chiller. However, at 800 W, the RC 2 GREEN conceals double the cooling capacity, in identical housing, thus saving 30 % in installation footprint and half the device volume when compared to competitive devices. The result is a space-saving operation of two rotation vaporizers, each having a vaporizing piston of 1000 ml, for example.
In addition, the RC 2 GREEN offers everything one would expect to see in a good recirculating chiller: a powerful pressurization and suction pump, a high-quality fine-mesh stainless steel filter and, of course, the typical IKA modern and user-friendly design incorporating intuitive menu navigation. The display on the control variant can be removed. This permits straightforward remote operation, freeing up space immediately around the working environment for additional essential laboratory equipment.

The IKA recirculating chiller product group now includes a total of six devices. They are all particularly suited for cooling in extraction processes and in combination with rotation vaporizers and laboratory reactors.

New Rotavisc Helistand from IKA

The measurement of highly viscous samples such as creams, pastes, paints and gelatin is a particular challenge for static viscometers. These substances are so viscous that they are forced to the edge by the rotational movement. An air channel is created around the rotating body, which is why the acting torque is then no longer meaningful.

 

The new motorized HELISTAND allows you to smoothly measure the viscosity of highly viscous samples, too. It moves the mounted viscometer and its rotating body slowly and uniformly up and down in the sample. Combined with the included T-spindles for non-flowing samples, you can thus acquire meaningful viscosity measurements.

 

Handling, installing and cleaning the HELISTAND is very easy. The ROTAVISC viscometer is simply placed onto the stand’s drive motor and the T-shaped needle spindle is attached to the viscometer.

 

Available as a standalone accessory or as a package complete with a ROTAVISC viscometer for more details please visit https://www.ika.com/en/Products-Lab-Eq/Viscometers-csp-279/HELISTAND-Set-cpdt-25008233/ or contact IKA at sales.england@ika.com

Why it’s time to embrace digital colour masters

A combination of digital standards and industry-leading instruments enables businesses to reduce costs and wastage across the entire supply chain by getting the colour of every component right first time.

Investment in R&D excellence from quality control instrument specialist BYK-Gardner enables companies across the globe to achieve consistent measurement and control of important characteristics such as colour. And not just colour. BYK-Gardner instruments measure many other characteristics such as gloss, orange peel, multi-angled colour, sparkle, graininess, colour fastness, cloudiness, transparency, clarity and haziness.

This is achieved through industry-leading LED illuminated instruments with optimal inter-instrument agreement and enables true full digital masters to be introduced for all these characteristics. The digital masters can easily be distributed through the supply chain making a digital approval process possible at every stage, in every location from beginning to end.

Guarantee repeatable product quality across time and space
Digital masters include spectral data and client requirements, while also allowing automatic colour identification where appropriate. Measurement tolerances and an instant pass/fail can be included on both hand-held and robotic installations. The result is self-approval throughout the supply chain and improved harmony between products to guarantee a high right-first-time rate.

Working with major manufacturers across many industries, the benefits from reductions in waste and delay as well as improvements in communication of measurement data, to productivity, quality and sustainability deliver a complete return on investment – the instruments can pay for themselves!
Digital masters can be sent by e-mail as an xml file to locations anywhere in the world. They have applications within industries including automotive, coatings, plastics, printing inks leather and even wine.

Blagden distributes BYK-Gardner instruments to companies across the United Kingdom. To find out how your business can benefit from the use of these instruments in combination with digital masters, call Simon Moss at Blagden on 01959 560818 or email.

Please note: Information provided here is given in good faith and without liability. It is intended for guidance only. Users are advised to conduct their own independent examination of the product to ascertain its suitability for incorporation into processes or products. Users should ensure that the use of the product complies with all pertinent current legislation. We guarantee to supply to specification, not performance.

Exhibitors

Company NameStand

Cornelius Group Plc

317

Datacolor AG Europe

313

Fullbrook Systems Ltd

403

Hauschild SpeedMixer® UK

301