Download Structure news # 13 (PDF 2.23 MB) - Struers

Structure 

news 

1 

Structure news · # 13 · June 2012 

www.struers.com 

Diamond products from Struers 

In this issue 

New cut-off machine 2 

Diamond products 3-4 

Application case 5-14 

Structure news 

Struers Diamond Products are the fastest way to obtain a perfect 

surface every time. They efficiently remove scratches caused by 

grinding without causing excessive deformation to or smearing of 

the microstructure. 

The careful selection of diamond type, grading of grain size and 

formulation of the individual products means you will have superior, 

satisfactory results which again means improved cost and 

time efficiency. 

is a quarterly newsletter from 

Struers, the world leader in 

materialography. The newsletter 

provides you with up-to-date 

information on materialography, 

applications and new innovative 

products. For more information 

about our products, please 

contact your local sales 

representative, listed on 

www.struers.com/distributors 

To subscribe to Structure news, 

please go to our website; 

www.struers.com/structurenews 

Read about the improvements on 

Struers DiaPro Suspension and 

DP-Spray on pages 3-4.



New products · # 13 · June 2012 

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New products 

Struers covers the entire range of equipment and consumables for materialographic specimen preparation - from 

uncomplicated manual machines to sophisticated computerized preparation solutions. Struers is constantly working on 

improving existing products and developing new ones. 

New manual cut-off machine 

We are pleased to introduce a new manual cut-off machine for 250 mm cut-off wheels, Labotom-5. In addition to its extremely 

user-friendly and simple control panel with only three buttons: Start, Stop and Flushing cleaning water, Labotom-5 has the following 

features: 

Safety lock and emergency stop 

for optimal protection of the user. 

The motor has an electrical brake to 

ensure that it stops before the safety 

lock is released. 

Strong light over the cutting 

table keeps the cutting 

process area well illuminated. 

Large cutting table (316 

mm / 12.4” wide and 

225 mm / 8.9” deep) 

for easy clamping of the 

workpieces. The cutting 

table has five 10 mm 

T-slots; three on the lefthand 

side and two on 

the right-hand side. 

Ergonomic cutting 

handle, designed to 

let the operator easily 

cut even very hard and 

difficult materials. 

Steep slope in the cutting chamber to ensure that 

the cooling water runs off and does not accumulate 

inside the cutting chamber. 

Cleaning gun with strong water 

flow for easy maintenance. 

Read more about Labotom-5 at www.labotom.com




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Improved DiaPro suspensions 

DiaPro is a unique line of diamond suspensions, specially 

developed for extra-high performance with Struers 

grinding and polishing surfaces, which improves your efficiency 

significantly. Each DiaPro suspension has been developed and 

optimised for a specific surface, and the results are 

outstanding. Preparation times are reduced by 30% on average. 

At the same time, DiaPro delivers outstanding planeness, edge 

retention and reproducibility. 

The DiaPro Allegro/Largo, DiaPro Dac and DiaPro Nap B 

suspensionhas now been improved. This means: 

• High removal rate 

• Low constant viscosity 

• Easy cleaning 

We care about the environment! 

Struers continuously strive to make 

our products as environmental friendly 

as possible and is a ISO 14001 certified 

company. We have recently evaluated 

all Struers consumables with focus on 

the development (composition of raw materials and design), 

production, use and disposal. We are pleased to share this 

evaluation with you and have marked our most environmentalfriendly 

consumables with our globe & leaf symbol in Struers’ 

Consumables guide 2012. 

It will give you the opportunity to choose not only according to 

specifications but also according to the relative environmental 

impact of our products. See the Consumables guide at 

www.struers.com/consumablesguide 

DiaPro suspensions are developed to give the best preparation 

results in the shortest time possible. Consequently, the removal 

rate is very high which again implies a lot of grinding/polishing 

dirt. The new DiaPro contains a special component which helps 

the dirt flow more freely, making it easier to remove it from the 

specimens, the surfaces and the machine. This effect is most 

visible when using DiaPro Allegro/Largo as the amount of dirt 

is larger on these surfaces. See pictures on next page. 

Improved DiaPro




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DP-Spray with nitrogen as propellant 

With its quickly evaporating carrier, allowing the diamonds to 

provide an aggressive cutting action and a fast material 

removal, DP-Spray (Diamond Polishing) is a very good 

solution. 

To live up to Struers’ ISO 14001 certification, we constantly 

strive to optimise our products and make them as 

environmentally friendly as possible. We have therefore 

changed the propellant in the DP-Sprays to nitrogen. Nitrogen 

is produced from atmospheric air and when used and sprayed 

into the air it has no impact on the environment. 

MD-Largo after flushing with water: left DiaPro, right new DiaPro. 

The new DP-Spray contains the same quantity of diamonds as 

the former type and will last for the same number of 

preparations. The diamond squirt is wider, which gives a 

better distribution of the diamonds onto the grinding/polishing 

surface. 

DP- Spray 

MD-Allegro after flushing with water: left DiaPro, right new DiaPro. 

DiaPro vs. new DiaPro.



Application · # 13 · June 2012 

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Application 

Materialographic preparation of a ballpoint pen for EBSD/EDS characterization 

Authors: H. S. Ubhi & K. Larsen, Oxford Instruments, United Kingdom, P. Nowakowski, Oxford Instruments, France, A. Guesnier, 

Struers A/S, Denmark. 

Introduction 

Electron Backscatter Diffraction (EBSD) is a scanning electron 

microscope (SEM) based technique that is finding increasing 

application in the field of materials microstructural characterization. 

EBSD is a surface-sensitive technique, where diffracted 

electrons escape from within only a few tens of nanometers of 

the specimen surface to produce electron 

back-scattered diffraction patterns. 

Residual surface deformation or reaction 

product layers from specimen preparation 

can therefore be detrimental for 

EBSD pattern generation. Specimen 

preparation is hence very critical for 

successful EBSD characterization of 

materials. A preparation method suitable 

for EBSD is also suitable for the 

less demanding Energy-dispersive X-ray 

spectroscopy (EDS or EDX) analytical 

technique used for the elemental 

Fig. 1. Tip of a ballpoint pen chemical characterization of a specimen. 

A ballpoint pen is a writing instrument with an internal ink 

reservoir and a sphere for a point, see fig. 1.. It is a product of 

experimentation, chemistry and precision manufacturing. The 

Table 1 

materialographic preparation of such a pen is discussed as well 

as the results gained using both optical microscope and SEM 

together with EBSD and EDS techniques. 

Preparation process 

A ballpoint pen is mounted in bakelite with conductive carbon 

filler, called PolyFast, specially developed for SEM examination. 

The specimen is ground on coarse SiC Foil # 320 until just 

underneath the middle point through the thickness of the 

section to make sure that the sphere does not fall out during 

grinding and polishing. 

It is expected that the specimen contains two components: a 

steel ball and a brass reservoir. The preparation process used, 

see Table 1, is developed taking into consideration that the 

physical properties of both materials are different. A rigid disc, 

MD-Largo is used for Fine Grinding and a low resilience polishing 

cloth is used for diamond polishing to ensure optimum edge 

retention of both components, the hard steel ballpoint and the 

soft reservoir made of brass. For final polishing an oxide 

polishing mixture consisting of 96 ml colloidal silica (OP-S) 

mixed with 2 ml H 2 

O 2 

(30%) and 2 ml NH 3 

(25%) is used in 

order to obtain a scratch-free result on the brass reservoir. 

The preparation 

method is run on a 

Tegramin-30. The 

specified forces 

are either for one 

specimen of 30 mm 

in diameter when 

running a single 

specimen, or for 6 

specimens 30 mm 

in diameter 

clamped in a 

specimen holder.




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Scanning electron microscope and optical microscope overview of a ball pen 

SEM image of the tip of a ballpoint pen. 

Ink reservoir 

The channel between the ballpoint 

and the reservoir is partially revealed, 

any deeper grinding and polishing to 

show the whole channel would result 

in the point ball falling out. 

SEM Montage of a ball pen 

Sphere for a point 

Optical image showing how the ballpoint fits in the brass reservoir. 

Bright Field, X 100. 

Optical image showing the microstructure of the ballpoint. DIC, X 1000.




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Analytical equipment 

The specimen is examined both optically and in the SEM, and characterized using EBSD/EDS techniques employing the Oxford 

Instruments NordlysNano EBSD, X-Max® 80 mm 2 EDS detectors and Oxford Instruments AZtecHKL EBSD Software. EBSD data is 

acquired using 8x8 binning and SEM settings with 8 kV acceleration voltage and 3.4 nA probe current. EDS quant is acquired with 

20 and 8 kV. 

Reservoir characterization 

EDS results: Reservoir 

SEM BEI (backscattered 

electron image) image of 

reservoir at zero tilt showing 

cold worked structure with 

bright elongated particles. 

EDS spectrum and quant 20 

kV zero tilt, shows the base 

alloy to be 60/40 Cu Zn alloy 

with addition of lead. 

EDS spectrum from the 

bright lead particles. The 

lead is added to enhance 

the machining of the brass. 

Wt % Cu Zn Pb Total 

reservoir 59.26 38.37 2.37 100.00




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Phase identification: Reservoir 

The phase diagram of Cu Zn shows that in the 60/40 composition 

the alloy has two phases, alpha and beta. 8 kV 3.4 nA EBSD 

patterns from the brass reservoir confirm presence of the two 

phases. 

EDS Layered Image 3. M_series 

EBSD pattern: Fcc/alpha Cu rich 

EBDS phase map. 

EBSD pattern: Bcc/beta Zn Rich 

At % Cu Zn Total 

beta 57.98 42.02 100.00 

alpha 65.33 34.67 100.00 

Note: IPF map shows that the beta phase is mainly green, 

and the alpha phase red and blue indicating a strong 

texture, grain size determination is a challenge. 

IPF Colouring 

Copper 

ZO 111 

SEM: 8kV 3.4nA 

% alpha = 81 

% beta = 18 

% lead =1 

001 101




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EDS Maps: Reservoir 

Zn L_series 

Cu L_series 

Pb M_series 

EDS Layered Image 3 M_series




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EBSD texture: Reservoir 

alpha Cu rich 

beta Zn Rich 

Results and discussion for the reservoir 

The reservoir is based on a two phase 60/:40 CuZn brass alloy with 2% Pb for free machining properties. 

The microstructure comprises two phases: alpha and beta, with a dispersion of Pb particles. The Pb particles did not produce any 

EBSD patterns. Low magnification EBSD maps show: band contrast, phase distribution and orientation maps with corresponding 

EDS maps. The shown pole figures indicate a cold worked texture with partial fibre texture in alpha and in beta.




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Ballpoint characterization 

SEM BEI image zero tilt tempered martensite, some porosity (grey contrasting particles). 

EDS: Ballpoint 

EDS quant 20kV zero tilt indicates a 13 wt% chromium steel. 

Wt % Si Cr Mn Fe Total 

ball 0.40 12.93 1.03 85.64 100.00




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Phase identification: Ballpoint 

Search for steels in the composition range shows a match with X65Cr13 bearing steel. Calculated 14% Cr isopleth indicates the 

structure to be ferrite with M 23 

C 6 

in the 0.6-0.8 range. 1x1 EBSD patterns at 8kV from the matrix and particles respectively, 

confirms ferrite and M 23 

C 6 

particles. Phases used for mapping Fe bcc and Cr15.58Fe7.42C6. 

EBSD pattern: matrix. 

EDS quant 20kV zero tilt of ball carbide. 

EBSD pattern: Carbides – M 23 

C 6 

. 

EDS quant 20kV zero tilt of ball matrix.




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EBSD Maps: Ballpoint 

EDS Maps: Ballpoint 

EBSD pattern quality map. 

Fe Lα1_2 

EBDS phase map. 

Cr Lα1_2 

IPF map. 

C Kα1_2




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Result and discussion for the ballpoint 

The steel ball is a chromium rich alloy, with a tempered 

martensitic structure and fine M 23 

C 6 

particles. 

Conclusion 

The ballpoint pen examined is found to contain two 

components, a reservoir made of free machining brass having 

good corrosion properties and a ball point made of steel with 

hard wearing and corrosion properties. 

Courses and Events 

Keep yourself updated on upcoming 

materialographic courses and events 

on www.struers.com/events 

Effectiveness of modern materialography, optical and SEM 

microscopy, EDS and EBSD techniques give possibility of deep 

insight into materials, structure, properties and processing. 

New office and lab in China 

Struers in China have moved to a new facilities. Since March, they are located in a brand new office and lab at Zhang Jiang 

Hi-Tech Park in Shanghai. 

Copyright © 2012 Struers A/S. 

All Rights Reserved.

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