It has been a long-established fact that a minor mix-up in the material could result in a major mishap and huge financial losses for the user. In order to prevent this from happening, all quality conscious project managers are increasingly prescribing Positive Material Identification (PMI) at each stage of plant commissioning. Mix-up can be at the vendor's end, during storage at the user end or at the time of actual fabrication. Thus, if PMI exercise is done at all these levels, a 100% confidence can be built up as far as material mix-up is concerned.

In view of this requirement of Indian Industry, Quantum NDT provides PMI services with state of art Niton XL2-800 equipment. Niton XL2-800 will be able to analyse alloying elements like Mn, Cr, Ni, Nb, V, Ti, Cb, Mo, W, V. Please note, we would not be able to analyse elements like C, S, P, Si, N by this equipment.

We can also provide services for portable Spectro which would be in a position to analyse elements like C, S, P, Si using Arc Met 8000. We can analyze carbon wherever we can get a good 25 X 25 mm flat surface. Also note that 'Arc Met' cannot be used for smaller size pipes and fittings. Its best performance is for larger than 50 NB size. For optical emissions-based PMI, we need 99.99% pure argon gas as well. It is important to note that for use of portable OES, surfaces need to be grinded and flattened to at least 25 X 25 mm size in order to generate a spark from the OES. If the samples do not permit them being flattened then analysis may not be possible with the portable OES. Due to the weight and the expensive nature of the OES machine, it is not possible to use this machine at high altitudes. The machine cannot be used on scaffolding unless proper platform arrangements are made.

Potential applications include:

• Inspection of panels / electrical equipment

• Inspection of mechanical / rotating equipment