Heating microscope
The laboratory is equipped with a heating microscope allowing to “visually” follow what occurs to the specimens subjected to heat treatment. In this way, it is possible to achieve information about:
- flattening/melting of the material (softening temperature, hemisphere temperature and sphere temperature)
- surface tension of the material.
Technical features of the instrument
The heating microscope Mod. HSM, Expert System (I), has the following technical features:
- kiln with Pt/Rh elements, equipped with quartz door (for its closure); it allows to set up thermal cycles up to 1600 °C, with max gradient of 50 °C/min. Thus, it is possible to set both slow thermal cycles – which facilitate the investigation of not known materials – and fast thermal cycles, that better simulate an industrial cycle
- high-resolution video camera, movable on three-axes, equipped with a focused backlight system that displays the sintering process of the sample under study as a series of frames that, at the end, allow to reconstruct the test as a movie composed of all the images selected by the operator
Contact person:
Dr. Giovanni Ridolfi- e-mail ridolfi@centroceramico.it
Mobile: +39 345 9317030
- ““Misura 3” – management software. During the test, it allows the automatic identification of the characteristic shapes at the typical temperature (softening, sphere, half-sphere and melting) according to the Standard chosen. At the end of the test, the diagrams resulting from the measurement of the dimensional parameters of the specimen can be observed at once: the sintering curve, the plot of the first and second derivative of the sintering curve, the contact angle graph. In addition, the software allows for post-analysis for more accurate assessment of the characteristic points, as well as dual animations for comparison between different tests.
Services to industry
- study of the fusibility of a material
- study of the firing cycle of different materials (including ash, slag, glass, glazes, ceramics, paints, screen printing pastes, etc.)
- study of the wettability of the body by the covering material.
