I have worked a bit with Allied, Buehler, and Leco. As others have noted each company has there strengths and weaknesses, also every local sales person is different(are they support or just sales?).
We have gone with Allied for our consumables and more of our equipment as we replace items. We are already with Allied for our consumables, grinding/polishing, and considering for mounting. We have a Buehler micro hardness tester, and a Leco carbon sulfur analyzer (previously all Leco equipment for metallurgical analysis, before my time). We have had great experience so far with Allied High Tech. I would say we would consider Leco, but have had a bad salesperson before(who is long since retired, and was before my time but burned a lot of bridges, some of the issues I am still dealing with, we have had no issue with our current sales person). The old Leco sales person (years before my time sold us a bunch of items we did not need or want, or realize until we became self educated on what was needed once we found out we needed to buy even more expensive equipment to do what we actually need(great short term strategy for the salesman, who is no longer there and we are still thinking about that experience almost twenty years later). My best advice is get self educated and don't just rely on a "good salesperson to tell you what you need", although a good sales person is important and a great asset.
We are currently working on repairing our allied grinder polisher, and have been happy with the customer service so far (we are not down, but thinking a belt is starting to get worn in our 5to6year old unit and the customer support has been good from Allied so far).
Our experience with Buehler is we have Buehler equipment for our Rockwell hardness testing out on the floor and employees are used to it and their equipment is more intuitive(my personal thought, or we are already used to it). We have a great independent tool representative that is very knowledgeable and worked with us on our Rockwell hardness items on the production floor, but was not the officaial territory representative for microscope hardness testers in our area.
I have been much more impressed with our local independent tool representative, who sells Buehler product than Buehler as a company overall (a lot of great people at Buehler and I was a huge fan before they got purchased by ITW in 2006, in my personal opinion the international focus has not improved companies owned by ITW which is a lot of companies). We were previously forced to buy from another Buehler tool representative(territory sales person for Microscopes on our microhardness tester) because of territory issues even though we had worked with the other independent tool representative before, and had wanted to purchase through that independent sales company we could not for territory issues.
The company/sales-person (that Buehler required us to use against my protest) did not order the microhardness tester to our specifications even though the purchase order we agreed to stated what we were expecting and they did not even order the complete mount holder or the correct configuration of machine/accessories. (the Buehler set-up technician was even a bit frustrated as he had to scramble to be able to try and finish the machine set-up the best he could with the missing parts/ he ended up ordering the needed mount holder for us). I am now able to again work with our knowledgeable independent representative after the other company did not specify the equipment correctly (I have to give the Buehler set-up tech a lot of credit for being able to make the best of a bad situation). We still cannot get our metallurgical test reports to properly say inches for the case depth reading even after reaching out when we purchased the incorrectly ordered system, so we are always having to explain it says mm but is inches).
All companies have their pros & cons, I would also recommend talking to someone who is not selling you product for opinions as noted, some sales people try and up-sell (on things you don't need or sometimes want). My best advice "simple is usually better" an example is automatic dispensers on grinders/polishers does not make sense if you will spend more time cleaning and maintaining than you would if manually adding grinding and polishing compounds. If you are just getting started and learning manually can be a great thing, as it forces you to understand the process. In my experience the first thing to go out is touch screens and electronic components, so if they don't have good support you could be having to replace an entire unit for electrical component failure when the machine is still good.
P.S. if you can go to the ASM Dome and take an in person class on metallography you can touch multiple machines and see the space requirements and get a feel for what it takes to collect, section, and mount a sample before analyzing it (better to spend money on knowledge up front than on years of expensive frustration from learning the hard way after purchasing items that don't really meet your needs).
Just my two cents worth. Good economical equipment that is easy to use and requires little servicing is what you want in my opinion especially starting out. Any sales person that starts with all the bells and whistles without listening to what you need is what you want to avoid.
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David Lammers
Engineer
Total Component Solutions
Sioux Center IA
(712) 451-6646
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Original Message:
Sent: 02-08-2024 16:53
From: Diane Esemplare
Subject: Metallography Equipment Recommendations
My company is thinking about bringing metallographic testing in house as the testing at outside labs is adding up. I'm looking at several vendors (Leco, Buelher, Pace/Metallographic).
I'm interested in hearing about people's experience with equipment from these or any other brands (good or bad)
Thank you in advance.
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Diane Esemplare
Quality Metallurgical Engineer
Hytorc
Riverdale NJ
201 738 2733
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