With new and advanced technologies, scientists have developed ways to study different metals’ physical structures and components, including alloy materials, using a microscope. Microscopy technology has been used for several decades to check the microstructure properties and quality of materials.
This particular scientific microscopic technique is known as metallography, which helps analyze microstructure materials found in different types of metals.
Why Is Metallography Used?
As stated earlier, metallography is the advanced scientific study of metals using microscopic technology. The metallography technique has been present for over a hundred years. It has always been a unique valuable technique and tool in examining and determining the overall microstructure materials in metals.
Metallography plays an essential role in the manufacturing, production and material development of different types of metals. It is essentially used to identify the reliability properties of a product. In addition, metallography is also used for failure analysis processes to check whether a product has been processed correctly.
Metallography is mainly utilized in different industries, including automotive, healthcare, power generation, medical devices, aerospace and defense industries, etc.
What Are Some Metallography Techniques?
Various metallographic techniques are used to analyze the macrostructure elements of metals. One of the most popular metallographic techniques is known as Quantitative Metallography.
This technique typically analyzes and identifies microstructural measurements of a metallic product, including volume fractions, grain shapes and sizes, number and distribution of grains particles per unit area, the height of size of grain particles and spacing between particles.
Quantitative Metallography plays a critical role in identifying industrial metallic products’ quality control and properties. Another popular metallographic technique includes the Light Optical Metallography technique.
The Light Optical Metallography technique is quite different from the Quantitative Metallography technique. The Light Optical Metallography technique uses light microscopic components to study the microstructures of various metals, ceramics, polymers, composites and minerals.
The Light Optical Metallography technique is conducted during the microscopic study of metals and alloys. Different light illumination techniques are used, including bright-field illumination, darkfield, Differential Interference Contrast (DIC) and polarized illumination.
Each of the above-mentioned Light Optical Metallography techniques plays a vital role in identifying macrostructure properties found in metals, height, polarization factors and properties etc.
The Difference Between Metallurgy and Metallography
Despite the close pronunciation similarities, there is a clear and understandable difference between metallurgy and metallography.
Metallurgy is a technological and engineering technique or process that involves scientifically studying the various metal extraction processes from their initial stages during manufacturing and production.
On the other hand, the metallography technique is the scientific study of macrostructure and microstructure properties in alloy metallic materials by using a microscope.
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