Material Specification | Metal Analysis | OES

Foundries, steel plants, aluminum die casters and others in the metals processing supply chain are under pressure to re-use as much scrap as possible. And after the shake-up of supply chains that the pandemic caused, many companies have had to switch suppliers. This means that foundries and metals processing facilities must more than ever tightly control the specification of the materials throughout the manufacturing process – right from supply to shipment.

But the ability to measure for every element that might be present within a sample is above what many facilities can achieve with their standard analysis equipment. And the instruments that can do this are often out of range of what current budgets can afford. At Hitachi, we’ve developed a solution to this problem, and it’s the OE series spark spectrometers.

Extensive analysis capability at an affordable price

We designed the OE720 and its gas analysis-enabled sister the OE750 to be affordable AND offer the level of performance that today’s industry needs. In a nutshell, the OE720 can measure the entire spectrum of non-gaseous elements within metal. If you also need gas analysis capability, then the OE750 is the solution for you. This breakthrough level of performance is possible due to a complete redesign of the optics, including our unique LightWing optic design and innovative CMOS detector technology.

Here are some examples of what the performance of the OE series enables you to measure:

Iron and steel producers
The OE series will detect all trace, tramp and residual elements, plus alloying elements. As an example, it can measure these elements to below 10 ppm: tin, boron, lead, zinc, bismuth, selenium and tellurium. The OE750 can analyses nitrogen at 10 ppm.
Aluminum die casters and manufacturers
The low detection limits allows for tight control of aluminum melt modifiers phosphorous (15 ppm), antimony (10 ppm) and bismuth (5 ppm), and verification of the presence of tramp and trace elements.
Other non-ferrous foundries and manufacturers
Again, low detection limits of the OE series gives the ability to analyze other non-ferrous metals, for e.g. copper anodes and copper alloys, including gun metals, brasses and bronzes. The OE750 can analyze oxygen in copper at 10 ppm and hydrogen in titanium alloys at 5 ppm.
Recycling facilities
The OE series can detect the presence of zinc in scrap metal to below 1 ppm. This makes the instrument invaluable when sorting metals for feedstock for foundries.
Any facilities undertaking PMI testing of incoming materials
Verifying the composition of materials entering your facility is becoming even more essential as the supply becomes more convoluted. Our OE series is designed to check for all non-gaseous tramp, trace, residual and alloying elements that play an important part in metals performance.

Currently the OE720 – and its sister, the OE750 – are the only spark spectrometers available that offer this level of performance within this price range. It was our intention to make high performance OES analyses more affordable, and the OE720 is the result.

Lower operating costs

In addition to a relatively low purchase price, we’ve also made the OE series cheaper to run than many spark spectrometers. The new optics configuration includes a completely redesigned spark stand for a highly efficient argon flow, reducing argon consumption by up to 50% compared with similar OES analyzers in this range and keeping costs down. We’ve also managed to increase wall plug efficiency, meaning that energy costs are lower too.

For real-time decision making our whole range of smart optical emission spectrometers come with ExTOPE Connect, a cloud-base data management solution. It establishes a central location for all data from your entire fleet of connected analyzers, even across multiple locations delivering a significant boost to operational efficiency and risk reduction.