How Safe is Your Aging Equipment?

Is your aging equipment strong enough?  Is it tough enough?  Don’t lose sleep at night pondering these questions about your high-risk assets with unknown operating histories and possibly compromised material properties due to elevated temperature excursions, hydrogen attack, or embrittlement.  Instead, reassure yourself the material meets design margins by sampling it with the Saxon Sampler™ and then testing it.  

The Saxon Sampler and its patented sample removing technology, designed by Schaser Scientific, LLC, is the only sample removal technology that can provide large enough samples to produce full-size standard test specimens, including all required replicates.  This includes ASTM E8 tensile specimens, ASTM E23 Charpy impact specimens, and ASTM E139-11 creep specimens.  Traditional sampling techniques, such as scoop or boat sampling, do not generate samples that can provide the number or size of specimens appropriate for standard ASTM test procedures.  Scoop samples are too small to produce specimens for physical testing and only facilitate specimens for microscopic examination.  Boat samples may produce a single specimen for physical testing but at the expense of requiring significant burr-grinding and weld repair after sample removal.

No longer will you be limited to only metallographic or subsize sample analysis, or a single replicate.  Test specimens obtained will match those used in testing procedures performed at the time of original fabrication.  The Saxon Sampler can remove samples quickly and efficiently so that they can be obtained even during the shortest outage windows.  The smooth contour and shallow angle of the remaining recess requires no follow-up blend grinding.   Pre-removal analysis using Fitness-for-Service (FFS) methodologies can verify that sample removal will not require subsequent weld repair and costly Post Weld Heat Treat (PWHT).  The Saxon Sampler can remove samples from base metal as well as from weld metal allowing for separate analysis of both locations.

Forgo the conservative assumptions used to estimate pending damage and hold off on replacing the assets by testing them directly to assure you are operating within the intended design margins.  Rest easy knowing the Saxon Sampler is available to offer peace of mind regarding the integrity of high-risk assets with unknown operating histories or potential material property damage.