Your Favorite SEM/EDS? 2

[Metalguy]

Got a new "leader" at work, and it looks like we may finally be getting our own SEM. It will be used primarily for met. failure analyses. I've seen others use a few over the years, and they seem to have better features every time I look.

SO, what's your favorites, and what do I make sure we get along with it? I have seldom if ever needed mags. of over ~1k, but I want all the DOF I can get, along with real good elemental analysis tools.

Gold is for the mistress - silver for the maid
Copper for the craftsman cunning in his trade.
"Good!" said the Baron, sitting in his hall
But iron - cold iron is the master of them all.
Rudyard Kipling

 

[daiana]

Thanks for your answer..
Can you tell me something more about ZEISS? Is the microanalysis fast and functional? Did you use Oxford or Edax? The instruments we should buy is a ZEISS EVO LS15 with Oxford Microanalysis "Inca Energy 250"..
And what about FEI? Do you know anything about it?

Regards ,

Daiana M.

 

[SMF1964]

Just got back from the Lehigh Microscopy School - all sorts of really cool instruments on display. Of the machines they had, the Hitachi instruments seemed to be the easiest to use in terms of environmental SEM capability (which I was focussed on, since my current machine can't do that). Of course, the operation of the instrument was left in the hands of the factory engineer (they wouldn't let the class's students drive without supervison) so it may be that some of these reps were better at driving their machines than others, but on the one Hitachi SEM/Bruker EDS the Bruker engineer seemed to do just as good a job running the Hitachi as the Hitachi rep. For the EDS systems, either Bruker or EDAX had a decent user interface, while the Thermo seemed to require a greater familiarity with the system/software - to the untrained observer it was confusing.

 

[CoryPad]

I could tell you plenty of things about the Zeiss EVO, but this is a "tips" forum, not a "complete guide to everything" forum. If you have specific questions, I may be able to give you specific answers.

Concerning the EDS system, we used a Bruker Quantax system. The physics is incredibly fast - 100,000 counts per second rather than the traditional 10,000 counts per second.

FEI is direct competitor to Zeiss, JEOL and Hitachi. They have sophisticated hardware and software that can meet most needs. You will need to make your own evaluation of things like software, training, service, cost, and delivery timing.

Regards,

Cory

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