Another new gizmo!
At the start of this year we were proud to announce our new ICP-OES. The inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometer replaced two old atomic absorption spectrometers and brought our sample analysis into the 21st century. With it we could analyse up to 1000 samples a week, much more accurately, in less time.
The ICP-OES has proven such a boon that we’ve bought another! This will bring important benefits to us and to you:
- When one machine needs maintenance, the other is still available. Just last week the motherboard in our original ICP-OES blew up (covered under warranty but at a cost of a week in lost time). Such problems will not present a problem in future.
- Boron analyses present a particular problem, as B is a “sticky” element that resists cleaning. We’ve been able to reduce our cleaning times for all other elements except B, for which we’ve had to increase cleaning time and effort. We’ve even had to buy special B-free glassware (B is a common ingredient in normal glassware). Now we can run batches of B analyses on one ICP-OES while we run everything else on the other one, greatly simplifying cleaning procedures and saving time.
- We can run even more analyses.
The new machine has been installed and is undergoing its final tests now, and will be up and running before the end of this month.