Colorado School of Mines – Department of Geology and Geological Engineering – Thin Section Laboratory
Colorado School of Mines (CSM), Colorado, USA have been a Logitech customer of geological thin section preparation for over 40 years. Within their Department of Geology and Geological Engineering they have a dedicated Thin Section Preparation Laboratory. The lab provides geological thin section sample preparation services for students, faculty and researchers within CSM as well as federal agencies and industry clients. The lab utilises Logitech equipment for Geological Thin Section Preparation.
This includes:
- LP50 Lapping & Polishing System – CSM utilise a LP50 Lapping & Polishing System. With three workstations, the LP50 is capable of producing more than 100 standard thin sections per week with the capacity to increase thin section output to approximately 220 thin sections per week if required. This system is primarily used for thinning the chosen material for even and flat surfaces utilising Logitech automatic plate flatness software.
- PM5 Lapping & Polishing System with a WG2 polishing head – This system is used to polish the final samples for high quality surface finishes. The PM5 combined with the use of our WG2 polishing heads they can reach a sample throughput of 6 samples per process.
- CSM also utilise a Logitech LP30 Lapping & Polishing system that they procured in the 1970’s – the robust system is still used to this day and is still producing quality geological thin sections.
The benefits
Jae Erickson, the Lab Co-Coordinator at CSM’s Thin Section Laboratory, has said “The preparation of high quality thin sections represents a fundamental step required for the study of minerals and rocks in geoscience. The combination of precision tolerances and high sample throughput on Logitech’s lapping and polishing equipment enable our laboratory to produce research-grade thin sections at a speed necessary to keep up with campus and external demand. The LP50’s auto-flatness monitor saves hours of downtime each week while allowing us to hold a roughly one-micron flatness tolerance, worry free, during critical steps of thin section production.”
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