TESTIMONIAL: ARL QUANTRIS at SLV Test Lab - Germany

Thermo has the pleasure to publish the testimony of Prof. Dr.-Ing. R. Felleisen hereafter:

“SLV Mannheim GmbH is primarily concerned with the training of specialist welders in line with globally recognised standards, in all conventional welding processes and material processings using laser and electron beams. The institute also monitors welding work in accordance with the standards laid down in DIN 18 800, Part 7, a role in which the DIN EN 17 025-accredited materials testing laboratory is involved alongside its other activities.

Founded in October 1952 as a regional institute, SLV Mannheim was privatized in 1978 and is now run as a public institution (GmbH company) by the City of Mannheim, the German Association for Welding and Allied Processes (DVS^â) and the Rhine-Neckar Chamber of Industry and Commerce. With around 35 full-time staff and a large team of associate lecturers from industry, public authorities and universities, the institute generates some €3.6 million per year, with expenditure at around the same level.

The range of activities performed by our accredited testing laboratory is extremely varied: in addition to quality assurance tasks for customers, the institute also carries out material and process tests on metallic and non-metallic materials. Much of our work in this respect is focused on damage analysis and expert evaluations. The experience thus gained flows back into our own teaching but is also passed on by our specialists, who fulfil the role of associate lecturers, when they deliver lectures at universities.

One invaluable piece of equipment that simplifies all the tasks described above is the ARL QUANTRIS spectral analysis unit from Thermo Scientific GmbH. This unit allows us to analyze many different kinds of materials and their composition types.

At SLV Mannheim, the unit is currently fitted out for six base materials (Fe, Ni, Cu, Al, Mg and Ti) and can be easily expanded if necessary to cover different composition types to meet the needs of future analysis tasks. As well as being able to identify all the key elements to a satisfactory level, despite the huge range of applications involved, the verifiability of nitrogen > 50 ppm is also of particular importance to our testing laboratory, particularly for damage analyses and examining the weldability of ‘old steels’. It is also worth mentioning that grey cast iron can be analysed without samples having to be remelted.

Last but not least, the unit is easy to operate and extremely flexible. The number of analyses performed per day is ‘only’ in single or double figures, since we do not carry out any large-scale industrial testing. But what is important for us in terms of testing capacity is to be able to test as wide a range of materials as possible.

Research carried out prior to the acquisition of the unit, by companies which are well-known to us, showed that this manufacturer offered a high level of confidence and satisfaction, not least in terms of customer service. This, together with the other advantages already mentioned, was the reason we decided in the summer of last year to acquire this system - which, to our knowledge, has absolutely no competitors in its present technical configuration.

Our experience to date has proved that this decision was the right one. We are extremely satisfied with the handling of the machine, the stability of the system and the calibration (with no need for frequent recalibrations, even when changing matrices).

Mannheim,  4 August 2005
Prof.Fe./stu
German Welding Institute Mannheim GmbH

Prof. Dr.-Ing. R. Felleisen
Chairman and Director”

PICTURE ON THE TOP RIGHT:
ARL QUANTRIS at SLV Test Laboratory

To know more on SLV Mannheim:
http://www.slv-mannheim.de

To know more on ARL QUANTRIS:
http://www.thermo.com/com/cda/product/detail/1,1055,22215,00.html