Cut and Polish Steel Samples

Standard non-killed lollipop samples are taken and each given unique location and sampling IDs. The steel samples should be cut and polished according to ASTM Standard - E2142 (E45 SEM equivalent). Several “Feature Filters” can be utilized to minimize interferences of non-included materials. One advantage to utilizing an electron beam contrast mechanism for the analysis is that it also allows for X-ray contrasting to be performed. This unique capability is not found on optical inclusion analyzers, which consequently require the analyst to manually confirm actual inclusions versus what is not an inclusion, or a surface defect. Since the general idea of conducting process control based improvements is to obtain information reliably and rapidly, a manual inspection of the data is typically not practical.