METALLOGRAPHY LABORATORY

With the equipment available at Touchstone, over 20 years experience in metallography preparing an incredibly wide range of materials, and a PhD metallurgist on staff, Touchstone is equipped to handle all your metallography needs.

Touchstone Houses a Well Equipped Metallographic and Petrographic Laboratory

Touchstone has been providing metallographic sample preparation to its customers for decades. Our scientists and technicians have experience with a wide variety of sample characteristics and classifications.

The Metals Handbook Desk Edition defines metallography as “The science dealing with the constitution and structure of metals and alloys as revealed by the unaided eye or by such tools as low-powered magnification, optical microscopy, electron microscopy and diffraction or x-ray techniques.”
With the equipment available at Touchstone, over 20 years experience in metallography preparing an incredibly wide range of materials, and a PhD metallurgist on staff, Touchstone is equipped to handle all your metallography needs. Our personnel have polished and studied virtually every metal system, and many ceramic and polymer systems.

Examples of materials commonly prepared and examined include:

Cutting

Low and high speed diamond cutoff saws offer the flexibility to cut through almost any material yet remain gentle enough to maintain the surface integrity needed when preparing and examining some of the most complex microstructures.

Mounting

A hot mounting press is essential in the preparations of some samples. Depending on the hardness of a given material, a thermosetting resin (Bakelite) may be necessary in order to avoid rounding the edges of a sample. This can happen if the difference in hardness between the sample material and the surrounding mounting medium is too great. Conductive mounting medium also makes a hot mounting press very useful in preparing samples for SEM (Scanning Electron Microscope) evaluation.

Two vacuum chambers allow for maximum epoxy impregnation when cold mounting specimens.

Grinding and Polising

Two state-of-the-art computer-controlled grinding and polishing machines give the technician the flexibility to handle virtually any material that comes through the door as well as the speed and repeatability needed for production preparation and analysis.

Evaluation

Sample preparation and the equipment necessary to perform it are only the beginning when it comes to complete quality metallography. Quality imaging equipment is also essential. Touchstone possesses a complete light microscopy and image analysis laboratory as well as electron microscopy capabilities. An inverted light microscope, stereomicroscope, two standard light microscopes, a fluorescent microscope, three SEM (Scanning Electron Microscopes), and a TEM give Touchstone’s metallurgical personnel the capabilities needed to accurately assess the microstructure of a given material. That microstructure can simply be documented in the form of raw images or a more complete report format can be provided. Failure analysis investigations also make use of the information acquired from quality metallography.

Whatever your metallographic need, Touchstone has the personnel and equipment necessary to provide the quality and service you require.

Call 304-547-5800 or e-mail info@trl.com today for a free quotation!