Ferrous Metals

The major products of the ferrous industry are cast iron, low and medium alloyed steels and specialty steels such as tool steels and stainless steels. In the production processes used to manufacture these end products other important materials encountered are refractories, sinters and slags, and of course the starting raw materials iron ore together with limestone and coke.
Ferro Alloy Additions for High Alloy Steels

Finally ferro alloys are employed in the high alloy steel making processes as a way of adding elements such as chromium nickel, molybdenum and silicon to the steels thereby completing an extremely varied spectrum of materials to be analyzed in the ferrous industry.
Analysis Requirements for Low Alloy Steels

For the bulk produced low alloy steels, where trace and tramp elements exerts significant effects on the strength and ductility, low detection limits and high accuracy are needed coupled with a fast analysis time.
Analysis Requirements for Austenitic Stainless Steels

For austenitic stainless steels where costly and often strategic alloying elements are added in relatively large quantities, accuracy and high element concentration level is demanded.
Analysis Using MagiX FAST from PANalytical

With MagiX FAST from PANalytical, measuring results can be achieved for wide different metallic matrices indicating detection limits below 10 ppm for many elements in measuring times of less than one minute.
Non-Ferrous Metals

The non-ferrous industries deal with a similar cross-section of material types in the production of metals such as copper, nickel, lead and zinc, but in these industries much more time and effort is spent in analyzing exploratory core body samples since these metals are generally present in much lower concentrations in the earths crust than is iron and more widely dispersed.
Analysis Requirements for Aluminium and Copper Alloys

Aluminum and copper are widely used in high electrical conductibility applications where the presence of some elements at even a trace level can give rise to unacceptable high power losses in electrical transmission lines. For aluminum an added concern is the fact the anodizing characteristics of the metal are strongly influenced by the presence of just a few ppms of certain elements. Thus for both, copper and aluminum, the most relevant analytical data concern is the detection limits achievable with a spectrometer.
PANalytical Analysis Solutions

The unsurpassed sensitivity, reproducibility and stability of Axios-Advanced make it possible to achieve these low limits of detection. The simultaneous PANalytical MagiX FAST X-ray spectrometer can analyze up to 28 elements simultaneously in less than one minute with a high degree of precision.
The PANalytical EDXRF Bench-Top Systems

The PANalytical EDXRF bench-top systems MiniMate and MiniPal are ideally suited for single element analysis and as back-up systems of larger laboratory equipment.
Potflux X-Ray Diffraction Systems

X-ray diffraction is the aluminium industry's standard method for potflux process control. The PANalytical CubiX PRO Potflux X-ray diffraction system allows simultaneous measurement of the phases present in the aluminium bath, as well as the calcium (Ca) content through an integrated Ca XRF channel in the diffractometer. Ultrafast pneumatic linear sample introduction means high throughput for the customer - as many as 60 samples per hour can be analyzed with the CubiX PRO Potflux.
Precious Metals

For the analyses of precious metals such as Au, Ag, Pt, Rh, Ru, Ir, Pd, Cu, Zn, Ni, Co, etc often XRF systems are used since a vital part of working with precious metals has to be the ability to determine accurately the composition of material at all times. It is important to be able to monitor the composition of work-in-progress both to control and minimize metal losses and able to effect regular inventory checks.
Advantages of X-Ray Fluorescence Over Traditional Techniques

Traditional methods like the Touchstone test, cupellation, fire-assay, nitric acid tests and also other analytical methods are destructive and often time consuming and hazardous. Also the preparation of samples takes longer.
Advantages of X-Ray Fluorescence Analysis

XRF as a non-destructive analysis technique can identify and determine the presence of various elements such as gold, platinum, silver, and other precious metals present in solid, powdered and liquid samples often within a matter of minutes. Sample preparation is quick and easy and solid samples as small as 3 centimetres can also be analyzed. Essential advantages of using XRF are the high reproducibility or precision and the high accuracy of this analytical method.
PANalytical XRF Solutions For Precious Metals

The Epsilon 5 is a high-performance EDXRF spectrometer specifically designed to achieve the lowest possible detection limits for heavy elements such as Cd, Pb, As, precious metals and the lanthanides.

AZoM - Metals, Ceramics, Polymer and Composites : Analysis of Ferrous Alloys, Non-Ferrous Alloys, Precious Metals and Metal Coatings Using X-Ray Systems – The Epsilon 5 from PANalytical

Figure 1. The Epsilon 5 EDXRF Spectrometer from PANalytical.

PANalytical offers a comprehensive range of products starting with the portable bench-top systems MiniMate and MiniPal through the medium-sized instruments up to the fastest and most sensitive spectrometer available today, the Axios-Advanced.
Metal Coating

Steel producers need an excellent quality control of coatings during their entire processes in order to avoid production loss, waste of coating material and achieve fastest possible control over their process. Car manufacturers need to quickly analyze different coating weights in order to keep quality at highest standards.
Advantages of X-Ray Fluorescence for Analysis of Metal Coatings

The analysis of metal coating is an ideal application for XRF because X-rays achieve higher penetration depths than comparable techniques. Coatings represent a variety of metallic mixtures and compound typically used to strengthen certain features of a product to make it better fit its purpose. And the recipes for these mixtures solely depend on what the user will do with the coated product.
Typical Metal Coatings

Typical metals used for coatings among others are titanium, aluminum, zinc, zirconium, chromates and phosphate for example for steel pre-treatment. TiN e.g. works well for machining iron-based materials. CrC with its high temperature oxidation resistance, is used in die casting while Tungsten carbide/carbon (WC/C) is designed to coat and protect highly-loaded precision components, gears and gear drives, engine components and hydraulic pumps and compressors.
Common Coatings Scenarios Where XRF Analysis is Used

Common coating applications where XRF is used as standard analysis tool include for example conductive coatings on plastic. Other typical applications are metalized food packaging and solar power cells using thing coatings of a metal alloy on a polymer subtrate. XRF systems are used for the precise non-destructive measurement of coating thickness as well as for alloy coatings and in the incoming material inspection.
PANalytical XRF Tools For Coating Analysis

The PANalytical EDXRF bench-top systems are typical XRF tools used in metal coating analysis. For more complex task we offer a comprehensive range of WDXRF spectrometers. The FP-Multi option of the SuperQ software package uses fundamental parameters to determine the thickness and composition of coatings and surface or sub-surface layers on samples such as metals and semiconductor wafers.