Latest News and Application Notes

There is something satisfying about watching all of the numbers on the clock and the calendar roll over to a fresh start in a new year, and that sense of a fresh start and a chance to begin anew is celebrated the entire world over. Many of these celebrations include hopes and wishes for luck, fortune, and longevity and are underlined by offerings of food and drink. After all, you should always start a new year in the way you hope it to continue!

Proper maintenance is more than just an annual checkup. Whether it's for your body or your instrument, a comprehensive support plan will bring you peace of mind about your health. That's why LECO has launched comprehensive maintenance plans for most* of our Cornerstone instruments in the United States.

Got milk? The infamous advertising campaign started in 1993 for the California Milk Processor Board and was an instant success. The strength of the advertisements stays true even today, with 90% of all Americans aware of the slogan. Though the campaign has been retired in all but California these days, the dairy industry is continuing to grow around the world. A huge part of this forecasted growth comes from the growing interest in dairy protein.

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.