Latest News and Application Notes

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.

In 2011, LECO's Cornerstone® brand software took the analytical world by storm. Intuitive screens. Adjustable charts. Diagnostics built into the software, with real-time monitoring and animated system diagrams. Designed by scientists, for scientists, Cornerstone blended industry-leading technology with practical functionality. Eleven years later, it's time for a facelift.

Many LECO analytical instrument rely on consumables like pure chemical and high purity gases to function. When supply chain issues affect these consumables, laboratory operations can quickly increase in cost or in worst case scenarios can even be shut down. One current issue that is plaguing the scientific community is the supply of helium.

Once more expensive than gold, aluminum has not lost its value over the years, only its price tag. Thanks to revolutionary methods of production largely developed in the late 1800s, the price of aluminum dropped from $34 an ounce in 1852 ($1,276 in 2022 dollars) to just $0.09 an ounce today. As a low-density, high-strength, corrosion-resistant metal, aluminum's usefulness has led to incredible consumption in many industries from transportation to packaging.

LECO is heading back to the show floor!

Are you attending the Cast Expo in Columbus, Ohio, from April 23 to April 26? Stop by Booth #2016 to meet our instrument experts and get answers to your metallographic questions!

Heading to AIST in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, from May 16 to May 19, instead? LECO will be at Booth #505!

Most iron products these days are improved with the addition of ferroalloys, or iron alloys containing high levels of other primary elements. Ferroalloys are everywhere from cast iron to stainless steel. These extra elements help strengthen the metal by adding their own characteristics: silicon is used to deoxidize steel, manganese mitigates harmful effects of sulfur, and chromium increases corrosion resistance, to name just a few. But adding to iron is not without risk; if unwanted elements are part of the ferroalloy, they can weaken the resulting products.

What happens when you put two fantastic scientific minds together? Fantastic scientific breakthroughs! Dr Kim Marshall from LECO and Dr Arne Bengtson from Swerim, in Sweden, sat down with Andrew Storey, LECO Field Sales Specialist for Materials Analysis and Measured Science podcast host, to talk about their collaborative work with atomic spectroscopy and where this technology is going.

Portland cement, one of the most ubiquitous building materials in the world, is not all the same. There are five standardized types of Portland cement classified by the ASTM C150 standard, and each of these different types have different best-use cases. Part of what distinguishes these types of cement is the concentrations of carbon and sulfur in the precursor materials. Sulfur is especially important in determining the final chemical resistances of the Portland cement, so knowing the sulfur concentration is critical to correctly determining the type and quality of the final material.

Elements Newsletter recently published an infographic of all of the metals mined from the earth in 2019, and the numbers were staggering. 3,248,814,334 tons of metal were mined, of which 3,040,000,000 tons were iron ore. Nearly 94% of all of the metal mined in 2019 was iron, and nearly that percent of the iron has been, in some way, touched by LECO.

The supply of helium for laboratories hasn't been as shaky lately as it has been in recent years, but the price of helium continues to rise. In the meantime, replacement gases keep being tested.