Calibration of a portable coercivity measurement instrument for assessing low-carbon steel

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Our company, located in Manchester, specialises in developing electromagnetic non-destructive testing (NDT) products. In the last couple of years, we have successfully developed a novel coercivity meter, which features portability, fast measurement speed and minimal or null requirements for sample preparation - unique advantages for on-site non-destructive applications. The system has been commercialised, released to clients, and deployed in the field. We have found diverse applications across different industries and have been continuously growing our technical experience and customer engagement. As an example, client's feedback confirms large efficiency improvement on heat-treatment assessment after using our novel product. A process that used to require 5 to 6 staff engineers and 20 minutes is now reduced to 2 engineers and 2 minutes. Other applications include aging and fatigue detection of steel structures and cables, residual stress distribution and testing of finished products.Together with NPL, an experimental measurement setup has been devised to create a traceability chain for MAIERIC's reference samples. NPL will compare coercivity values determined on MAIERIC's reference standards to those determined on standard geometries. The DC magnetic properties of soft magnetic materials are typically determined using the permeameter method (outlined in BSI/IEC 60404-4). Current measurement standards are generally limited to well defined geometry. For a direct comparison NPL will modify and existing set-up to accommodate MAIERIC's smaller, non-standard geometries.Our target industries include power, traffic and developments, marine, aerospace, metallurgy, chemical and mining, with main applications on assessing working life, aging and fatigue of steel structures, critical components, machinery, etc., quality of finished products, metal sorting, in a wide sense, assessment of steel during all its service life. To be able to produce traceable measurements for each application means we can expand our market quickly. We are confident that solving our current issues of calibration and traceability will bring to MAIERIC substantial additional revenue. As well as increasing sales revenue, improve process efficiency for both us and clients to save costs -- hence realising significant financial gains and contributing to the technology and innovation ecosystem of the Manchester community.