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Why PIP is the best alternative to Hardness Testing

The Indentation Plastometer is a benchtop mechanical testing technology that measures metal stress-strain curves and hardness numbers from a rapid and automated indentation-based test.

Explore a comparison of the benchtop Indentation Plastometer and hardness test machines to see which is the best indentation-based testing technology.

Indentation plastometer - stress/strain curves from indentation mechanical tests

PIP vs Hardness Testing

The Indentation Plastometer is a benchtop mechanical testing technology that measures metal stress-strain curves and hardness numbers from a rapid and automated indentation-based test.

Explore a comparison of the benchtop Indentation Plastometer and hardness test machines to see which is the best indentation-based testing technology.

Features

Measures yield stress

Measures hardening behaviour

Measures ultimate tensile strength

Measures uniform elongation

Measures hardness numbers

Able to map properties

Quantitative actionable data

Test small volumes of material

Minimal sample preparation

Fast testing times

Low testing costs

Why is a stress-strain curve better than a hardness number?

A hardness number is not a fundamental material property. Hardness tests into the same material generate different hardness numbers if the tip shape and/or peak applied load are changed. As a result, hardness numbers can’t be used to make important engineering decisions with any real degree of confidence. They can only be used in a semi-quantitative way to rank materials.

This is not true of the stress-strain curve which is a far more meaningful measure of a material's strength characteristics.. A stress-strain curve reveals many of the fundamental mechanical properties of a metal such as its yield stress, its hardening behaviour, and the ultimate tensile strength. These properties are used to accurately determine how materials and components behave structurally under loads, and feed data into finite element models, engineering design calculations, life extension calculations and more.

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Benchtop Plastometer

The Indentation Plastometer is a benchtop mechanical testing device that extracts metal stress-strain curves from indentation test data in under five minutes.

Accurate stress-strain curves in less than 5 minutes

PLX-HotStage

The PLX-HotStage add-on module for our benchtop testing device that extracts mechanical properties from indentation test data at temperatures of up-to 800 °C

Measure mechanical properties at temperatures of up-to 800°C

Portable

Scalable, accurate, and fast testing of high value metal assets in the field.

Scalable, accurate, and fast testing of high value metal assets in the field

PLXUS

PLXUS is our cloud-based digital platform for the collection, storage, and analysis of PIP test data. Identify trends, share and collaborate with colleagues, and track savings in cost and time.

Cloud-based collection, storage, and analysis of PIP test data

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