j.w.s. Posted September 22, 2014 Posted September 22, 2014 I'm considering buying an XRF gun to identify alloy steels on my various jaunts around the countryside. I keep finding high carbon steels but have no proper identification for them. It's a considerable amount of money so I'm wondering what other uses aside from my own I could apply it to in order offset the cost? Lord knows I've got a few local friends that would love to get an analysis printout of their steels and maybe even their damascus billets in order to give customers some technical information etc.. plus i know a few scrap yards that dont have one either that could probably benefit from sorting alloys. What can you guys think up? $20 mystery metal analysis by mail, etc? J Quote
rockstar.esq Posted September 22, 2014 Posted September 22, 2014 I googled it a bit and found a couple of applications beyond what you're looking at. Art / historic appraisal. Enviornmental analysis. I suspect to market those abilities you'd need to know what thresholds of what substances indicate a pass or a fail. Beyond that, I wonder if local motorsport racing has guidelines for material standards on critical parts. Quote
the iron dwarf Posted September 22, 2014 Posted September 22, 2014 $20 mystery metal analysis by mail, etc? that could be useful to some, even from this side of the pond Quote
oof Posted September 22, 2014 Posted September 22, 2014 I don't think an XRF will test for carbon, so you'll still have to do a little sleuthing. mark Quote
j.w.s. Posted September 22, 2014 Author Posted September 22, 2014 It does, Mark and it gives a nice break down by % of all elemental components, then matches it up with an internal database of 400 different alloys and gives you the closest match, such as 4340, o1, 1095 etc. Pretty handy little things. J Quote
Judson Yaggy Posted September 23, 2014 Posted September 23, 2014 Last I knew someone (Japanese IIRC) was working on a consumer grade electrochemical analyzer that you could hook to your smart phone. It was a Kickstarter campaign, and the device was going to be fairly inexpensive. Might check into that before spending $$ on a XRF. Quote
ianinsa Posted September 23, 2014 Posted September 23, 2014 A friend of mine has one that he uses at auctions, big ones IE Gov./ military and petrochemical surplus. That way he buys 'known' scrap as opposed to common old scrap. For resale. He spends big bucks and makes really big bucks. Quote
j.w.s. Posted September 23, 2014 Author Posted September 23, 2014 Mike, I stand corrected, it doesn't actually measure carbon content - just everything else. :) oh and Judson, I'll check into the kickstarter. -J Quote
j.w.s. Posted September 24, 2014 Author Posted September 24, 2014 LIBS (Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy) may be the better solution once guns start coming to market. It appears they analyze every element, uncluding carbon. -J Quote
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