Our Facilities
Located on Touchstone Research Laboratory’s campus, Veloxint has access to a large cadre of scientists, engineers, and technicians, and tens of millions of dollars of scientific equipment.
Powder Metallurgy Laboratory
The analytical testing lab contains a wide variety of research equipment including X-Ray Diffraction (XRD), Particle Size Analysis, Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC), Thermogravimetry Analysis (TGA), X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF), Thermomechanical Analysis (TMA), Helium Pycnometry, as well as an additional SEM with EDS capabilities. Veloxint offers these services to other powder manufacturers.
Light Microscopes
Veloxint has numerous transmitted and reflected light microscopes used for a variety of imaging needs. Both polished and unpolished samples are studied with numerous optical techniques including brightfield, darkfield, polarizing, Nomarski interference, oblique illumination and many other optical methods. Microscopes are also equipped with various image analysis packages.
Tensile Machine
There are more than twenty tensile and fatigue testing machines ranging from 11,000 kip to 120,000 kip located on the Touchstone campus where Veloxint is located.
Glove Boxes for Handling Powder
Multiple glove boxes are used to store and work with materials in a very high purity inert atmosphere.
Powder Production Facility
The powder production facility utilizes an array of equipment including several mills of varying sizes to create powder alloys.
Scanning Electron Microscopy with EDS
The Hitachi FlexSEM 1000 is used for capturing high resolution, high magnification images of a given sample. Whereas a standard light microscope is typically limited to magnifications of ~1000X or slightly higher, a standard SEM is capable of capturing images at 100,000X or more depending on the sample. Our SEM is also equipped with an EDS (energy dispersive spectroscopy) system that is capable of determining the elemental composition of a given sample.
Hardness Testing
Veloxint is equipped with multiple methods for measuring hardness and microhardness in scales including Rockwell, Vickers, and Knoop Hardness.
Metallographic Laboratory
The metallographic laboratory utilizes a Buehler precision cut-off saw that is used for cutting small samples for metallographic preparation. Mounted samples are then polished using the Buehler AutoMet 250 polishing machine. Polished samples can then be analyzed using various lab equipment and techniques such as light microscopy, microhardness, SEM/EDS analysis, XRD analysis, etc.