Latest News and Application Notes

If you make the same thing the same way every time, you would expect to get the same results. But anyone working in a quality control lab knows just how much variability there can be on the same line, especially when working with organic materials such as those used to make whiskey. Small changes in temperature or atmospheric humidity, or the quality of the initial mash or final barrels can change the aroma profiles of the final products, and the aroma profiles themselves can be the first indicator of a problem on the production line if they can be analyzed and characterized with enough speed and confidence.

Here in America, millions of families will be sitting down to a hearty Thanksgiving meal on November 24. While many minds are caught up with the necessary preparations for this dinner, few will be thinking of the metallurgical and elemental analysis preparation that went into crafting the very materials used to create Thanksgiving dinner. From the carving knife to the oven that roasted the turkey and most of the pots and pans in-between, chances are good that LECO has touched at least part of the preparations for your dinner.

Farmers are fortune tellers. In so many ways, they must predict what will happen in the future. What seed do they plant? How many? Will there be a drought? What will their yields be? What will the market be like? Everything science can do to give farmers an edge in their predictions can help make their futures more secure. One such advantage arises from carbon and nitrogen determination in soil, fertilizer, and plant tissue.

With ever-increasing demands on your time and resources, optimizing your workflow is essential. Learn how state of the art instrument and software solutions come together, to enhance your one- and two-dimensional gas chromatography applications (GC-MS and GCxGC-MS) in a collection of short webinars presented on Wednesday, November 30. These webinars will be presented twice for ease of international audiences.

As a consulting laboratory, your reputation is one of the most important factors of your business. The ability to not only provide accurate results with confidence and helpful assistance and education in a timely manner, but also to communicate it to your clients is essential to continued success. Ray Marsili, owner of Marsili Consulting Group and a Food-Flavor Chemist, knew the instruments he procured for his lab could very well spell the difference between success or struggle.

In 2013, as the eastern span replacement of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge was drawing to a close, 277 vertical steel rods to improve the seismic stability of the replacement were tested under tension using three-inch-diameter bolts. Within two weeks, 32 of the steel rods had snapped. 277 of these rods were used in the $6.5 billion construction project, but only 96 were accessible. Metal testing suggested hydrogen embrittlement during the manufacturing of the rods may have caused the failures. Thankfully, this was able to be corrected before the bridge opened, but it was a major setback in the construction.

Halloween is a special time of year, and whether tricks or treats come into play, there's a lot of fun to be had by sharing and enjoying a host of candy products! Learn how LECO's state of the art solutions, like the Pegasus^® BT GC-TOFMS and ChromaTOF^® Sync data alignment software, can help you unwrap the aroma profile and chemical composition of your candy.

Carbon is an essential building block of life on our planet. The amount of carbon present is an important factor in soils and agriculture. Carbon levels can help determine the quality of soil or the location of natural hydrocarbon fossil fuel deposits that may affect the quality of raw building materials. These levels can be determined by a Total Organic Carbon (TOC) determination. LECO's line of instruments includes several that can determine TOC in different ways.

How do you know what is in your food? If you're like most consumers, you take a look at the information on the back of your food packaging to know the ingredients and nutritional value. But how can you trust that information is correct? Where does that information come from? Someone like Jonathan Griffin, Public Analyst and Lead Analytical Services Manager at Kent Scientific Services in the UK, answers that question.

When it comes to comparing sets of sample data, being able to synchronize your results can help you get a broad overview at a glance. A visual comparison of your chromatograms may not be enough, especially not when your analytes are coeluting. ChromaTOF^® Sync is a powerful new data processing tool that will gather all of your data into one place, making it easy to highlight trends and spot significant and subtle differences between your samples.