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A hydraulic press uses a hydraulic cylinder to produce a compressive force. Within a hydraulic press, there is a plate where the sample is placed to be pressed for sample preparation. This blog post will outline the working principle of a hydraulic press and will touch on the hydraulic presses available from XRF Scientific.

How Does a Hydraulic Press Work?

A hydraulic press works on the principle of Pascal’s law, which states that when pressure is applied to a confined fluid, the pressure change occurs throughout the entire fluid. Within the hydraulic press, there is a piston that works as a pump, that provides a modest mechanical force to a small area of the sample. There is also a piston with a larger area, which produces a larger mechanical force.

Fusion equipment is used to perform borate fusion, a sample preparation method where an oxidized sample is dissolved in a molten flux at around 1050^oC. Fusion equipment is typically used for sample preparation for x-ray fluorescence (XRF) and inductively coupled plasma (ICP) analytical techniques.

The process of borate fusion doesn’t use any concentrated or toxic acids, which makes it safe, and the sample preparation time is considerably shorter than other methods. Using a fusion machine results in a very effective and pure sample, improving any further analysis.

Typical samples that can be prepared using a fusion machine include ceramics, rocks, pigments, ores, and cement.

This blog post will highlight the range of fusion equipment available from XRF S...

Reference materials are controls used to validate the quality and traceability of a sample and to validate the methods used to analyze these materials. Reference materials are often used in analytical chemistry to perform these validations, as most analytical instruments gather comparative data. A comparison of the reference material and the sample under test provides a range of information in XRF analysis, including the coating thickness and other material surface properties.

Different Types of Reference Materials

Depending on the product under analysis there is a range of reference materials that can be employed.

Pure chemicals are often used, especially in applications that require chemical purity or trace chemical analysis. Reference materials c...