Autosamplers & Automation

Loading a rack at 17:00 is the least of it.

The simplest benefit of an autosampler is unattended operation — loading a rack and collecting results in the morning. The more important benefits are analytical: carryover, contamination and settling problems that no amount of operator care can fully solve by hand, solved instead by the autosampler's own design.

A settled sample gives a meaningless result.

Used oil wear-metal analysis predicts mechanical failure in engines, gearboxes and hydraulic systems before it happens — by tracking iron, chromium, copper, lead, aluminium and silicon in lubricating oil. South African mining and heavy transport run extensive oil-analysis programmes on haul trucks, draglines, mills and locomotives, because an unplanned gearbox failure costs orders of magnitude more than the monitoring programme.

The problem: used oil samples contain suspended wear metal debris that settles between sampling and analysis. The ASX-1400 and ASX-1600 homogenise each sample with a variable-speed stirring paddle immediately before aspiration, with an independent rinse for both probe and stirrer and a drip cup preventing cross-contamination — a purpose-built solution for a large South African market segment.

Half the run isn't measurement.

Roughly half of an ICP-MS run's clock time is not measurement time — it is the probe travelling, rinsing, and the sample washing into and out of the spray chamber. ASXpress Plus pre-loads the next sample into a valve loop while the current one is being measured, then switches it in instantly, cutting this dead time significantly. For a commercial laboratory billing per sample, this is a direct increase in revenue capacity from a modest accessory.