GNR – Solutions for X-ray analyses in industry

“This is GNR’s favourite meeting place,” tells Alberto Foglio Para, the CFO of the GNR Analytical Instruments Group, and takes us to the coffee machine at the start of the company tour. Italian coffee, however, is only one of the benefits of visiting Agrate Conturbia in person instead of watching the company video. Foglio Para has more to reveal: “We have new products in the pipeline, new application notes on the web site, and we are opening up an office in Stuttgart.”

GNR’s success lies in continuous innovation. Founded in 1984 as a producer of optical spectrometers, GNR has reached a prominent position in the diffraction, residual stress and retained austenite markets. Hybrid Photon Counting (HPC) technology has also played a role in that prosperity. The MYTHEN detector is integrated into GNR’s powder diffractometers since 2012, and the company has implemented the MYTHEN2 in its stress robots and portable stress units already in 2014. Today GNR produces a variety of diffractometers, stress robots and portable stress units, and the company has many more ideas for new developments.

“Our users working in a stress industry setting have strong requirements for data accuracy, but also on the bookkeeping of their measurements. For us this means continuously developing both the software and the hardware of our stress robots”, explains Luca Seralessandri, R&D manager of the X-ray department. The stress robot, StressX, now features a possibility to monitor the data collection in real time. At the end of the data collection, the software automatically generates the results in a form of a standardized report. For the users dealing with in field stress determination, GNR has developed a portable stress robot, the SpiderX. The smart design of this instrument allows for a MYTHEN2 detector, electronics, a battery and a goniometer housing to be packed in a lightweight trolley.

“This year we have launched a desktop version of the AreX, our retained austenite diffractometer. AreX D combines the Mo source with the MYTHEN2 detectors, so the data collection takes only a couple of minutes,” explains Seralessandri.

Figure 1. AreX D diffractometer optimized for accurate retained austenite measurements.

As our tour continues through the GNR laboratories, it becomes clear that not only the stress industry is benefitting from the new developments. Also the users of the Explorer and Europe diffractometers can expect new features that will even further facilitate their measurements in various laboratories and industries. “Some users prefer to start with a basic system and build up the machine step-wise. We have a couple of new attachments ready,” announces Giacomo Siviero, the X-Ray Product Specialist at GNR. So what is the secret?

Figure 2. Europe theta-theta bench-top diffractometer.