Foundrax Puts Automated Brinell Measurement in a Handheld Microscope
Foundrax Engineering Products, specialists in Brinell hardness testing since 1948, have launched the BRINtronic-RIVO, a completely self-contained version of their BRINtronic automatic Brinell microscope.
RIVO builds the camera, illumination, image processing and touch screen display into a single stainless steel microscope weighing under 1kg. There is nothing to plug in: no PC, no control box and no cable. The battery lasts a full shift in normal use. The operator places RIVO over the indentation, presses the button, and the hardness appears in about a second.
Where ISO 6506 and ASTM E10 require an indentation to be measured across two diameters, the BRINtronic measures 800, so significantly beats the requirements of both standards. A refined measurement algorithm in RIVO further reduces the influence of surface condition on the result, and the instrument warns the operator if a surface is too poorly prepared to measure reliably or if an indentation is out of round beyond the limit set by ASTM E10. As with every BRINtronic, its own illumination means there are no adjustments to make, whatever the ambient light or indentation size.
The Brinell test depends on measuring the diameter of the indentation, and for most of its history that measurement depended on the eye and judgement of the operator. Foundrax changed that in 1982 with the first BRINtronic, built into the first generation BRINscan hardness tester and running on a computer with 4 KB of memory (state of the art at the time). By removing operator interpretation, it turned the Brinell test from an inherently problematic measurement into a highly reliable one almost overnight, and it was widely adopted in industries including oil, gas and aerospace. The system has been upgraded many times since and remains the industry benchmark.
Foundrax Managing Director Alex Austin said: “Every BRINtronic upgrade has aimed to make the system faster and smaller. With the RIVO we have taken that as far as it can go. The whole system is in the microscope housing, with no compromise on measurement performance. And if the surface is badly prepared, or the indentation is out of round, it tells you.”
Each RIVO is supplied in a rugged carry case with a charger, desk stand, external backup battery, safety wrist strap and PC software for downloading results, together with a UKAS certificate of calibration to ISO 6506 and ASTM E10.
For more information: www.foundrax.co.uk
