Stacked to perfection – the Sieve Tower!

He doesn’t make much noise, but he brings structure into chaos. Shake by shake, he separates fractions with precision. Whether it’s for mineral classification or just to bring some order to your dusty mess – he’s always down to filter the fluff from the facts.

Are you interested in knowing the particle size fractions of your samples? We can automatically sieve them in our Retsch sieving tower.

She’s got the whole world in her jar – the Planetary Ball Mill!

Spinning like the Earth, but with a lot more chaos, she grinds even the toughest samples into fine, analytical-grade powder. Four grinding jars orbit the center like loyal moons, each one shaking up the contents with centrifugal fury. 

Samples too coarse? Our planetary ball mills can help. Samples of 2 mm or smaller can be milled down to the nm-scale if needed. Our current milling bowls are lined with agate, which limits the sample hardness to 7 on the Moh’s scale.

The manufacturer does however offer materials such as tungsten carbide, silicon nitride, zirconia, stainless steel and alumina.

Mixer Mill!

In the famous words of a recording artist this employee truly is shaking it off. Like a madman the mixer mills moves from left to right at 30 Hz for 15 minutes and eradicates any heterogeneities in our powders. These may have occurred while freezing the slurry by means of gravitational settling of variously dense mineral grains. Although this feisty machine appears to say no a lot we say yes and thank you.

Are you trying to mix two or more different powders together? Our Retsch MM400 can shake up to eight 30 ml Nalgene bottles at 30 Hz for however long is necessary to produce homogenous mixtures.

After mixing, we can of course also produce a pressed pellet for you.

The rotary sample splitter!

She is musically quite gifted and fond of 80s music: Turn around, every now and then I get a little bit lonely standing in the corner alone. Turn around, every now and then I get a little bit tired spinning round at 100 rpm. Turn around, every now and then I get a little bit nervous that I won’t be used again. Turn around, every now and then I split samples with an accuracy of 99 %. 

With our special custom-made product for fine powders, we are also happy to process your sample batch.

Our coolest employee!

Meet our coolest employee, the freeze-dryer. At -55 °C aka -67 °F she performs sublime work in turning ice to steam and steam to ice again. All the while not letting her tasks put her under any pressure. Continuously working at 0.050 mbar or 0,00073 psi she has yet lose her cool. However, she does have a little help from the vacuum pump, our most valuable player (MVP). He makes sure to keep the pressure off at a rate of 6 m3/h or 212 ft3/h.

Do you have delicate samples and would like to dry them without baking them in an oven. Freeze-drying can help by the power of sublimation. Currently the samples are dried in 500 ml borosilicate round-bottom flasks.

Heavyweight champion of the lab - Atlas Autotouch!!!

Flown in from the United Kingdom, weighing in at 125 kg or 276 lbs and just like Atlas in Greek mythology carried the world, our hydraulic press carries our lab on his shoulders. So far, he has been responsible for every Nano-Pellet, which has left our lab. Hydraulically compressing everything with a load between 4 & 40 t time and time again for the past 4 years! We are indebted to this reliable piece of machinery, keep it up buddy.

With our automated hydraulic press, Specac Atlas Autotouch, we can press your samples into any kind of pellet you desire.

Our diameters range from 10, 13, 20, 32 & 40 mm. Others are possible but would require the purchase of a new pressing die.

Pellets can be pressed “our way”, which is binder-free and the sample being surrounded by a fortification material for easier handling and mechanical stability.

We can also mix your samples with a binder of your choice or press it into aluminium cups. 

Additionally, we can make traditional sample cups, for example Chemplex cups covered with Prolene foil.