PMI - Positive Material Identification / Alloy Verification

It is estimated that between 14% and 22% of all alloy material in the U.S. is misidentified. In the simplest terms, PMI is the Qualification and Quantification of the chemical alloy elements used in the manufacture of alloyed metals.
In other words, PMI, when performed on a piece of alloyed material, say S/S 316, will identify the materials as S/S 316 (Qualification) and tell you the percentages of the alloying chemical elements. In this case: Chromium, Nickel, Molybdenum, and Manganese (Quantification).
PMI can identify a myriad of alloys including, but not limited to:
Incoloys / Hy-Mu 80 / Monel / Waspalloy / Haynes / NA22 / NiResis / Rene 41-77 / Gold /
Astroloy / Multmet / Mult-155 / E Brite / Brass / Invar / 15-5 PH / RA330-333 / Ferralium /
Nimonic / HUHB 904 / Supertherm / Hastelloys / Titanium / Udimet / Silver / Gmr235 / Kover /
Stellite / 300 - 400 Series SS / Inconels / AL6XN

HTS has been in the inspection business since 1966 and has been a leader in the verification of alloy material through Positive Alloy Analyzation.
HTS utilizes safe, technically advanced, portable alloy analyzers for the Nondestructive Testing of alloy materials.
The process is so safe it can be used directly on machined surfaces, finished surfaces, fine jewelry, even alloys in service.

Principles of Positive Alloy Identification
The Alloy Analyzer combines a well established analytical technique; radioisotope Xray-excited fluorescence, with modern microelectronics to accomplish several measurement objectives. The primary objectives are verification of alloy grade or type (qualification) and composition analysis of a large number of engineering alloys (quantification). All measurements can be made on samples in a variety of physical forms such as pipe, plate, welds and welding materials, machined parts, castings, etc.

X-ray-excited fluorescence is ideal for the application, since it is a non-destructive method that allows measurement of many elements with high precision. Alloy identification is accomplished by recognizing the unique combination of several elements in narrowly specified composition ranges. Accurate quantitative analysis is achieved by making appropriate corrections for interelement matrix effects.
With the Alloy analyzer, the material to be analyzed is exposed for a few seconds to radioisotope sources. The atoms of some elements in the material are caused to fluoresce and emit excited Xray characteristics of that element. The Detector then separates Xrays coming from the sample into energy regions and, from a measure of the intensity in each region, determines the element concentrations. The energy region corresponding to the elements Ti, V, Cr, Mn, Fe, Co, Ni, Cu, Nb, Mo, Zn, Se, Zr, Ag, Sn, Ta, W, Au, Pb, Bi, and Hf are analyzed effectively.

The heart of the system is the Central Processor Unit (CPU), which coordinates the operation of the probe with the electronics unit according to the instruction contained in its permanent memory. All essential calibration data is stored in this memory. In addition, a second memory is used for storage and data processing of standardization and other factors pertaining to special modes of operation.

Hurley Technical Services, P.O. Box 1, Marlton, NJ 08053. Tel: 856-983-3432; Fax: 609-953-8415.