Helping to Produce Precision Glass

Now producing per day, billions of unique glass beads used in ‘blood typing cards’, Mo-Sci Corporation relies on the Morphologi G3 image analysis system from Malvern Instruments to characterise these precision beads. President of Mo-Sci Corporation Ted Day, believes that the Morphologi G3 is the only particle characterisation system on the market capable of delivering results at levels of accuracy suited to the quality requirements of the speciality glass his company manufactures, where both size distribution and morphology have a critical impact on product performance.

“We tested multiple systems and found that, while able to characterise our specialised glass materials from a size distribution standpoint, other systems couldn’t separate out and identify individual particles that overlapped within the view of the microscope,” said Mr Day. “The novel dry powder dispersion system integrated into Malvern’s Morphologi G3 reduces the particle to particle contact numbers to within manageable levels, prior to any measurements being made. By increasing the statistical power of our quality assessment sample measurements, we are more able to demonstrate the true quality of our products. Also, because sample preparation is almost automatic, this system offers enormous advantage by both reducing sample preparation times and increasing measurement repeatability.”

Mr Day explained why the Morphologi G3 system is now an essential tool at Mo-Sci Corporation: “During the development of the unique glass beads used in blood typing cards, it could take three operators four days to look at the beads in a single card. We make a very large number of beads each day and need to regularly measure a statistically relevant number of samples. The Morphologi G3 can accurately measure all the beads on a card in around 15 minutes, and that includes setting up the sample. The measurements themselves take only a few minutes and produce enormous amounts of information.”