WA Branch Technical Meeting - 10 May 2021

WA Branch Technical Meeting - 10 May 2021 Materials Inspection and Instrumentation Expo (MIIX 2021)

Source: Rick Hughes - Microanalysis Australia, Managing Director and Principal Consultant

On the 10th May, the West Australian Branch of Materials Australia conducted an expo for companies working in the materials inspection, microscopy and instrumentation sector, that was open to members and to the broader engineering, research and materials community. This half-day event was held at Curtin Innovation Central, which is a technology partnership hub at Curtin University that is supported by Cisco. The Innovation Central team was also a supporter of this event, and their members were fantastic hosts, and also helped with the promotion of the event.

The event was free to enter and was supported by the sponsorship of the exhibiting companies. The WA Branch was able to attract the interest of 11 industry sponsors, which were able to display and exhibit some of their latest technology and instrumentation solutions for the materials sector. The joint Gold Sponsors for the day were Anton Paar and Scientific Partners. Anton Paar also participated in the Branch technical meeting that evening with Bettina Bokor making the technical presentation. Anton Paar is an international instrumentation specialist with headquarters and manufacturing based out of Germany. The company specialises in a wide range of instruments including CO2 monitoring, rheology, atomic force microscopes, coating thickness instruments, FTIR, microwave digesters, surface area/ pore structure analysis and pycnometry to name a few. The company has grown from its beginnings in servicing the beer brewing sector. The silver sponsors were: Peak Scientific (with Hydrogen generators on display), Microanalysis Australia (which had two of their materials consultants on the stand) and Malvern Panalytical, which had a benchtop XRF spectral analyser on display, and which also represents a wide range of other spectrometer brands. The Bronze sponsors were: AXT, NewSpec (who represent Hitachi Instruments), Metrohm, Olympus, Coherent Scientific (representing Nikon) and PCTE. AXT, NewSpec and Olympus all had new hand-held XRF equipment on display, and NewSpec was also promoting the new laser version of the hand-held analyser from Hitachi. Coherent had a new Nikon stereo-microscope on display. Metrohm had a range of instruments supporting chemical analysis in materials and other sectors, and PCTE exhibited a range of NDT technologies for industry and the concrete sector. We also had Andrew Gillen from Netzsch join the event on-line from Sydney, and also Katerina Lepkova from the Curtin Corrosion Centre presented on-line on the Centre’s capabilities. Both of these presentations were very well received by the audience. The purpose of this inaugural exhibition was to promote stronger contact between suppliers and professionals working within the Western Australian materials science and technology sector. Around 50 people attended on the day, from across research, industry and academia. Just under 30 people attended the BBQ and drinks and the subsequent evening presentations by the Innovation Central Executive Manager, Andrew Bell, and the Technical Sales Specialist – Characterisation at Anton Paar, Bettina Bokor. Bettina did a great job presenting on “Material Characterisation with Anton Paar: Case Studies and Applications”. Overall sponsor feedback from the event was very good and they appreciated the opportunity to have face-to-face meetings once again. The venue was excellent, the catering was also very good and the team at Innovation Central helped the organising committee (Paul Huggett, Paul Howard and Rick Hughes) deliver this successful inaugural event.