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Applying Knowledge to enhance industry's competitiveness

June 25, 2003

The National Physical Laboratory (NPL) is launching the NPL Technology Applied initiative during its annual Summer Reception on Wednesday 18th June 2003.

"As the UK's standards laboratory, our mission is to develop and disseminate the measurement science and technology on which our economy and the quality of our lives depend. It is a national mission, funded mainly by the UK Government, within the National Measurement System (NMS) and the instrumentation sector is a key route to exploitation of NPL's new innovative measurement technologies", comments Dr Bob McGuiness, Managing Director at NPL.

NPL Technology Applied is a new scheme that recognises the practical application of NPL science to innovative commercial measurement technology. The focus behind this new initiative is to raise the profile of commercial instrumentation and software where NPL technology has been used. It is a scheme whereby instrumentation companies promote the incorporation of NPL Technology Applied through the use of a hallmark emblem on their products - along the lines of Intel inside on computers.

This recognition will bring added value to the commercialisation of products and increase the level of confidence in devices and systems that have been developed wholly or partly by NPL. An example of how NPL Technology has already been successfully applied is the current partnership with Precision Acoustics Ltd (PAL), Dorchester. NPL and PAL have developed the solid-state ultrasonic Power Meter, which will ensure that physiotherapists worldwide are able to provide patients with the safest and most effective ultrasound treatment to date.

"Until now", says Dr Bajram Zeqiri, Head of Ultrasonics at NPL "the only methods for checking equipment, have been too complex and prohibitively costly for application at user level, either in the NHS or in private practice."

The innovative solid-state ultrasonic Power Meter is a compact, easy-to-use device which will retail under £400, a fraction of the price of existing equipment. The low cost and user-friendliness of the ultrasonic Power Meter make it a very attractive alternative to the systems currently in use.

Terri Gill, Managing Director of Precision Acoustics Ltd adds, "We welcome the introduction of the NPL Technology Applied scheme and believe that it will deliver added value to the sale of our product. Given NPL's widely recognised international reputation, the NPL Technology Applied hallmark brings real confidence to the product".

Southern Scientific Ltd, who supply instruments for medical, physical research and industrial applications, is another partner that will benefit from the introduction of this new scheme. A collaboration between NPL and Southern Scientific began back in the mid 1990's to look at interfacing the ionising chamber, used to measure the dose of a radiopharmaceutical, with a direct reading electrometer to make the chamber more user-friendly. The US based company Capintec was also approached for its expertise in the field; the resulting product is now widely used across the world in hospitals and at other National Metrology Institutes.

Ken Frost, Managing Director of Southern Scientific, comments, "Optimum accuracy is a crucial success factor in treating cancer. Having NPL's reputation for the highest accuracy associated with our made to order ionising chambers is thus essential to our securing business. We've supplied national metrology institutes and large hospitals with the product in countries as far afield as Korea and Brazil. With the current orders, the business we have generated is in the order of £100K.

Brown & Sharpe has had a partnership with NPL for nearly 20 years and has successfully used NPL's new measurement technologies in 3 products: the gauge block interferometer, the length bar and the primary length bar measurement devices. These instruments, which incorporate frequency stabilised laser technology also developed at NPL, are used to calibrate the highest accuracy length reference gauges used in industry world-wide. The gauge block interferometers alone have already brought the company over £7 million worth of sales to National Measurement Institutes and other major calibration laboratories.

Dr Philip Aldred, Director of Product Development at Brown & Sharp comments; "Our long-standing partnership with NPL has been extremely successful. We welcome the introduction of the new NPL Technology Applied scheme as it will add value to our product marketing activities and further promote the excellent work that we undertake together."

Instron® is a global company operating 35 offices in 17 countries that manufacture, market and service a wide range of materials testing instruments, systems and accessories. When NPL was looking for a partner to commercialise its miniature thermomechanical test system (ETMT), Instron's experience and reputation made them an ideal candidate.

Peter Fuller, Instron's Area Sales Manager, comments, "The system is of particular interest to the aerospace and power generation sector, to examine the combined thermal and mechanical properties of super alloys. We are seeing a significant level of interest from academic institutes around the world with several significant orders in the pipeline. The system is unique and like all good designs quite simple. The strong brand images of both NPL and Instron add weight to the credibility of the system, giving us a significant advantage in introducing a new testing concept to the market."

Another highly successful example of NPL's influence on the instrumentation sector is their work with Millbrook Scientific Instruments. This Lancashire based instrumentation company has recently launched the MiniSIMS, a novel benchtop instrument for Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (SIMS) using a quadrupole mass analyser. SIMS analysis is critical to many of today's cutting-edge technologies and products enhancing quality of life. The charge neutralisation system used by this chemical microscope is based on developments to improve measurements by Dr Ian Gilmore and Dr Martin Seah, NPL scientists with a particular expertise in surface chemical analysis.

Dr Tim Steele, Technical Director and Co-founder, comments, "The charge neutralisation system used in the MiniSIMS is the result of a collaboration between NPL, Millbrook development staff and our sub-contractors. It has delivered an exceptionally easy-to-use solution for the analysis of insulating materials by SIMS in both positive and negative secondary ion polarity modes. It can be used for positive ion imaging SIMS with resolution down to 50µm and in many cases for imaging negative SIMS. In extensive trials, the charge neutralisation system has shown itself to work on a wide range of insulating materials and to be a valuable addition to the capability of the MiniSIMS".
ENDS

For further media information please contact Isabelle Clarke or Noor Kheir on 020 8943 6268/6937, email: press@npl.co.uk

National Physical Laboratory (NPL)