Great read, one wonders what cost 👌👌
Hi Drmiggy:
A valid and important question. No absolute answer. However, a local coin and gold buyer has a much simplified version, without microscope, which gives a single reading. It is designed and calibrated for silver and gold, not other metals in his case but he has done several readings for free for me. One can buy calibration elements for other metals. I think those entire units run around 20,000?
The SEM-EDX is clearly high end and designed for researchers. It will most likely only be found on large University campuses or sophisticated Materials Testing labs. The unit I had access to had three levels of charges; one for students in the department, one for other campus researchers and one for business or industrial applications.
"Individual results may vary around the world, I'm sure". It will depend on the exact device too. The largest portion of time goes to having the machine pump down a vacuum; some units are faster than others. We were able to look at about 6 pieces an hour and in my specific case, rates were $65/hr. Also, with the smaller collars, we were able to put 3 pieces in at a time thus saving time in the vacuum process.
Hope this helps. It's not prohibitive.
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