Materialography

Objectives and methods of materialography

All work steps in materialography aim at uncovering the microstructure of the material as precisely as possible. Preparation, imaging and interpretation steps are to reveal a maximum of quantitative and qualitative information. This examination of the microstructure allows diverse conclusions and provides findings on the material's properties. Such precise and reproducible information on the material condition is of interest for a great number of industries and industrial sectors. Quality assurance and failure analysis as well as fields of in-house research and development are based on the results of materialographic work. This work and its results bear high responsibilities while materialographic working methods and equipment are subject to particularly high demands. Preparation errors and inaccuracies can distort the results and must therefore absolutely be avoided. In addition to that, the individual preparation steps have to be carefully matched.

Demands on machines and working materials in materialography

Materialographers assume a high responsibility when it comes to the reliability and reproducibility of the results of their work. Errors made due to improper processing and unsuitable working equipment can have serious consequences. Experts in the field of materialography do not only rely on their well-founded expertise but also on absolutely reliable and precise working equipment. In order to make the materialographic preparation process an economical one, it is furthermore necessary to rapidly perform the individual steps causing as little wear on working materials as possible. A carefully matched range of machines and consumables is of great benefit for the materialographic work. Cutting, mounting, grinding and polishing steps build on one another so that a step performed with precision facilitates the subsequent preparation step. Each individual preparation step requires special materials and tools in order to obtain best results. As each and every one of these work steps places specific requirements on instruments and auxiliary materials, SCAN-DIA has developed special devices, working and auxiliary materials. Thus, all work steps can be performed using perfectly matched high quality materials.Materialography