We recently visited Pressure Metals Ltd in Sheffield, South Yorkshire. Founded in 2019 by three seasoned experts in the steel industry, the company supplies high-quality metals (low alloys, stainless and Duplex, and nitronic and nickel alloys) to meet the performance-critical needs of the global oil and gas industry.
Our visit was to provide a quick familiarisation course on the BRINtronic-NEO, fully-automatic Brinell microscope which the company had just purchased to use alongside our Model 134 portable Brinell hardness tester. The 134 is a hydraulic unit requiring no power line, so it’s typically found in steelworks where an abundance of unwieldy components make it more straightforward to carry the tester to the material than vice versa.
We asked Danny Garside, one of Pressure Metals’ founder-directors, what had driven the decision to buy the NEO and 134:
“We actually had a 134 tester and a BRINtronic where I worked previously so these were machines I was familiar with, but back then the BRINtronic wasn’t a NEO; it was a much larger model in an armoured case that was quite heavy and took up a lot of desk space – there was a desk specifically for it. We went for the new NEO because it is much lighter and smaller so doesn’t need a dedicated space, and space is at a premium in a busy steel warehouse. We can take the NEO wherever we like.
“As we sell metals into the oil and gas component supplies sector, accurate hardness measurement is critically important so we had to have a fast and accurate means of measurement and one that would ensure no queries from our customers. In fact, customer recommendations were one of the reasons we went for the NEO in the first place. The three senior staff here all use it and are all very happy with it. It takes just a few seconds to measure and calculate the hardness so over the course of a year there’s a significant time and cost saving.”
