Fischer?s non destructive X-ray-fluorescence (XRF) technology helps Birmingham Assay Office

Fischer’s non destructive X-ray-fluorescence (XRF) technology helps Birmingham Assay Office adapt to change and emerge as the largest, most successful Assay Office in the world. Birmingham Assay Office was founded 236 years ago by an Act of Parliament in 1773, and it has stood the test of time. Its core, statutory business is to test and hallmark precious metal items as required by the Hallmarking Act. Although its ‘reason for being’ has remained the same, it has proactively met its changing business environment of recent years to create opportunities out of the growing Far East market, changing fashions and the high price of gold. Fischer Instrumentation’s unique offering of non destructive testing instrumentation has played a significant role in meeting a whole new marketplace demand. 20 or so years ago saw 80% of semi finished jewellery goods being supplied largely from the great jewellery quarter in Birmingham. Small samples could be scraped from the article and tested using traditional destructive methods such as cupellation for gold and potentiometric titration for silver. Although time consuming, destructive and costly in terms of labour and energy, there was little alternative. 20 years on and the tables have turned. The shift in manufacturing to places in the Far East, Turkey and Eastern Europe, has resulted in 80% of jewellery goods now being supplied to Birmingham Assay Office in a ready finished state, with gems already set. In addition, the jewellery items are quite often hollow to reduce the weight, thereby making even a scraping too destructive. Fischer’s XRF technology proved timely and as a result of the systems’ efficiency and speed, a considerable investment has been made in the XRF systems on the part of Birmingham Assay Office. Fischer’s X-ray fluorescent (XRF) technology is the greener solution, in that it is non-destructive and removes the need for gold samples to be wrapped in lead and subjected to ferocious heat in energy guzzling furnaces. The spectrometers can screen the ready finished jewellery; each of the models XDV-SD, XDAL and XAN offering an effective energy resolution. Even peaks very close to one another, such as gold and platinum, can be evaluated selectively. These models have proved ideally suited for the analysis of entirely unknown samples with the use of the latest software improvements. The XRF spectrometers have also provided a solution to the growth of costume jewellery. Such growth has created a need for nickel testing and the XRF system is particularly effective in screening and channelling for the next best, more detailed analysis procedure (there are up to 58 different methods). The Assay Office has a special laboratory to address this need. With continuing healthy demand for its assaying, the Assay Office has recognised the need for convenience on account of its major jewellery retailing customers and has set up 7 sub offices where the hallmarking is now processed by an independent Assay Office team on the site of the host company, offering speedier turn round of stock and greatly improved security. While the gold consumption market continues a gradual decline, other new products are emerging such as Palladium for the lower end of the market, while ‘white’ gold continues with its top end niche. Product research and development is a continuing process at Helmut Fischer GmbH + Co. KG, Sindelfingen, Germany. Volker Rößiger and Bernhard Nensel have produced a research paper on the Analysis of Jewellery and Precious Metals which is available to download from www.fischer-material-analysis.co.uk or by telephoning the UK marketing and distribution centre, Fischer Instrumentation (GB) Ltd, on 01590 684100, where you can also obtain technical details or talk to a sales engineer.

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