Materials Characterization

Company Announcements

MTS Systems reported that sales for SANS Group (see IBO 5/31/08) for the first half of fiscal 2009 ended March 29 were $8.0 million and that the subsidiary had an operating loss of $3.5 million. Orders totaled $12.0 million.

MTS Systems named Gail P. Steinel to its Board in October. She is former global managing partner of Arthur Andersen’s Business Consulting Division.

Instron formed a strategic alliance with Magnaflux, another Illinois Tool Works Test & Measurement company, for service of Magnaflux products.

Scientific Solutions agreed to represent Formulaction in Australia.

In July, Thermo Fisher Scientific and NETZSCH-Gerätebau GmbH announced a sales cooperation agreement for thermal analysis and rheology, targeting the polymer industry in Germany.

Half-year sales for Biolin Scientific AB, a provider of systems for the nanoscale study of interfaces, rose 24.6% to SKR 60.7 million ($4.3 million) (see IBO 9/15/09). Q-Sense sales rose 35%.

Wyatt Technology announced in September the opening of Wyatt Technology Scandinavia, headquartered in Uppsala. It is the company’s fifth office in Europe.

Product Introductions

Brookfield Engineering introduced the Falling Ball Viscometer for dynamic viscosity measurements of transparent Newtonian fluids.

Seteram and AlyXan announced the VistoMS, which couples their respective thermal analysis techniques and Fourier Transform ion cyclotron resonance MS for directly measuring an ion’s cyclotron frequency and the calculation of corresponding mass without fragmenting ions.

Wilson Instruments, an Instron company, introduced the 574 Rockwell Hardness Tester.

Mettler-Toledo released a line of melting point systems, consisting of the MP50, MP70 and the MP90, which all can simultaneously measure up to six samples.

RheoSense launched the m VROC MEMS-based microfluidic viscometer, which requires a 50 µL sample size and has a measurement range of 0.1–100k cp viscosity.

In August, Horiba introduced in Japan and Asia the benchtop SZ-100 nanoparticle analyzer for particle size and surface potential measurement. It will be launched in the US and EU in March 2010. It features a measurement range of 03. nm to 8 µm and a 100 µL cell for zeta potential measurements.

PerkinElmer launched the Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC)-Raman Spectroscopy hyphenated system, combining the DSC 8500 with the RamanStation 400.

Malvern Instruments introduced the ZEN1010 high-concentration zeta potential cell for its Zetasizer Nano system for measuring samples of up to 10% w/v. It requires 150 µL sample in the measurement area.

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