A microscopic look at some counter materials
Dartmouth College
Another great contact I've made through Twitter in the last few months is the Aspex Corporation in Pittsburgh, PA. Aspex has been in business since the early '90s and they have embraced social media with a savvy and confidence that makes them stand out. The Aspex Corporation makes Scanning Electron Microscopes among other things and that a company in a very technical field and a kitchen designer could strike up a casual acquaintance is a great example of the expansion and simultaneous contraction of the world made possible by social media.
A scanning electron microscope (or SEM) is an instrument for visualizing the surfaces of objects and materials not possible through ordinary optical microscopes. Rather than using a lens to magnify reflected light (an optical microscope) SEMs use a focused beam of electrons to scan a surface.
Aspex Corporation
The electrons get better to a detector and the detector generates an image. SEMs can only "see" a small section of an object at a time. So the object being tested is positioned on a Sample Stage in the SEM and the degree makes small, incremental moves referred to as rasters. The rasters are then compiled right into a entire photograph and displayed on a screen. It's pretty cool stuff. Most human beings have visible SEM photos of ant's heads or snowflakes and that is a brief clarification of how the ones pictures have been made.
Well Aspex is going for walks a suggestion to experiment and examine any sample that could suit inside the chamber of one among their SEMs without cost so I took them up on their offer.
I enjoy slicing via advertising and marketing communicate to an almost dangerous diploma and counter materials are a product category rife with it. For so long as they have been round, I've heard the claims made by quartz composite manufacturers that their merchandise had been "perfectly smooth and non-porous." Since this claim is constantly made throughout a contrast with the surface irregularities of granite my BS meter goes off.
Quartz composites are a superbly satisfactory fabric and I specify their use all the time. In my thoughts, they are an alternative to natural stone counters but not a substitute for them. They have a totally unique look and there are unique times while their use is called for. At the equal time, every so often the over all appearance of a room requires granite or soapstone or marble. These materials aren't interchangeable and each one has its strengths and weaknesses.
So when Aspex Corporation made its offer to scan any sample I could fit into the chamber of one of their SEMs, I decided to put to the test the quartz composite claims of perfect smoothness and non porosity.
I took samples that have been sitting on the stop of my table for years and shipped them off to Aspex.
The samples I sent were a chunk of Santa Cecelia granite and Sienna Ridge by way of Silestone. This is in no way an accurate sampling of a whole industry's products. Rather, this is a test of very unique and thoroughly treated samples. The proof supplied right here is anecdotal at satisfactory but I still there is some thing valid to be found out.
Picture from Aspex Corp.
Here are my samples upon arrival at Aspex.
photo from Aspex C orp.
Here they are relaxing in the front of the PSEM eXpress, Aspex Corporation's bench top model.
The degree of magnification in the following examples is expressed with a scale in each image. The scale is in microns and a micron is another word for a micrometer. A micro meter is a millionth of a meter, put another way, a micron is 1/1000th of a millimeter. Microns are abbreviated as µm. To give you a little more perspective, a human air is 100µm wide and a red blood cell is 8µm in diameter. Salmonella bacteria are 2µm in length and 0.5µm wide.
So here's what my pattern of Santa Cecilia looks as if.
In this photo, the scale on the pinnacle reads 200?M. So in case you took human hairs and set them aspect by means of aspect, they would be as wide as the dimensions.
In this photograph the dimensions reads a thousand?M. So if you took ten human hairs and set they side with the aid of facet, they would be as huge as the scale.
Here's every other Santa Cecilia granite picture at one thousand?M.
Now it's quartz composite's turn.
Here's my quartz composite pattern with a scale that reads two hundred?M.
Here is is at a higher magnification, 1000?M
And every other shot of it at a thousand?M.
Pretty cool, huh? Now, I will grant the quartz composite people an acknowledgement that this sample is smoother than this sample of granite, but I would hardly call it "perfectly smooth and non porous."
So what I take away from this is that I won't be swayed by claims that I should specify quartz composites over natural stone because they are smoother and non-porous (and more hygienic by implication) and I will continue to use composites where they would look best and natural stone where it would look best.
What do you observed?
In the meantime, poke around on Aspex Corp's website . You can even send in something of your own with this form . They have a pretty cool contest every week where they invite people to guess what a scan is. Here's last week's:
Care to chance a bet?
Why it's a Post-it word being pulled again from the pad of route.
Thanks Aspex!