Latest News and Application Notes

Most fasteners are essentially springs, and when these fasteners fail it is usually abrupt, "out of nowhere," and caused by fatigue. Fatigue failure is estimated to account for 80-90% of all fastener breaks. However, by its very definition, fatigue damage happens over time, due to repeated loading that stresses an already weakened location. ASTM E1823-10a, Terminology Relating to Fatigue and Fracture Testing, defines fatigue as: "The process of progressive localized permanent structural change occurring in a material subjected to conditions that produce fluctuating stresses and strains at some point or points and that may culminate in cracks or complete fracture after a sufficient number of fluctuations." Preventing fatigue failure is a critical part of engineering designs.

When you think of a sports competition, you may picture several athletes at the tops of their game duking it out for supremacy, whether on a pitch, a track, a course, a pool, or wherever else their sport takes them. But sport competitions can transcend humans challenging each other. The competition in the sports equipment industry is just as fierce as that between players.

The Rockwell hardness test is one of the fastest and most convenient hardness testing methods used around the world. With the lack of sample prep and optical requirements, it is the easiest to work into automated production lines, and the common Rockwell hardness scale C (HRC) is an easy way to refer to the hardness of metals that even the lay person can understand. However, it is not the only hardness testing method. Knoop (HK) and Vickers (HV) hardness testing methods can also find the hardness of a material, but the values are not interchangeable. To compare material hardness, the values must be in the same hardness scale.

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.

Bakelite, Lucite, epoxy, or acrylic? Hot or cold? Compression or castable? With all of the options available for mounting materials, it can be difficult to know which one is the best option for your sample or why it even matters. However, your choice of mounting material is important, and it can affect the final quality of your prepared sample.

Does automated hardness testing software really provide that much of an advantage over manual methods? LECO's Cornerstone-based AMH55 system takes the human variance out of the process, making it fast, precise, and accurate, but just how much variance is actually involved? LECO decided to put it to the test, pitting seven humans of varying metallographic experience against the AMH55.

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!

There is no question about it: concrete is the most ubiquitous and versatile building material in the world. While the basic recipe is simple—cement, aggregate, water, and air—the variations and additions to this recipe can create infinite types of concrete. Knowing that your concrete is capable of withstanding the forces that will be acting upon it is vital to the success of any concrete construction process.

If all you need for your mount is a uniform shape to hold your sample, Bakelite or epoxy would work just fine. It's simply a matter of finding the mounting material that works best with the sample material. But if you need a mounting material that lets you see the sample mounted within, there is no better choice than Lucite.

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.