Dave Durham, Western Region Sales Manager, EDAX/Gatan
We are quickly approaching that special season where we are encouraged to momentarily put aside our busy schedules and take an inventory of the things in our lives that we may not have had a chance to appreciate throughout the year. Considering the pandemic we’ve all been experiencing during the majority of 2020, I think it is especially important to stay optimistic and find the positive things that have materialized during this challenging and weird year.
Professionally, as a salesperson for the company, I am undoubtedly very thankful for the fact that the team at EDAX has had the resolve to release several new and compelling products this year. Amazing! Even considering the challenges of 2020, there has been a steady stream of recent upgrades and technology that have allowed us to provide our customers with groundbreaking tools to make their work and research even more successful. All this during a period where, I would have thought, very little innovation would be introduced in the field.
First was the release of APEX™ 2.0 for Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy (EDS) and Electron Backscatter Diffraction (EBSD). This was a substantial upgrade to the APEX Software interface, integrating it with our EBSD product line, allowing our customers to analyze their sample’s compositional and structural characteristics, and implementing a handful of other critical improvements to the capabilities and functionality of the platform.
Then we announced the launch of the new Lambda™ WDS product line. These spectrometers utilize a proprietary X-ray optical module to give them much better sensitivity at low energies and extend the energy limit beyond 15 keV, giving them superior performance in compositional analysis within WDS applications.
We followed that up with another huge announcement – the release of our Clarity™ EBSD Analysis System. The Clarity is the world’s first commercially available direct detector of its type designed for EBSD, ideal for operating at low currents and low voltages, where typical phosphor-based EBSD technology is unable to collect usable EBSD patterns. This detector truly opens a new window into sample types and applications that have never been possible with EBSD analysis. Very impressive!
Lastly, we released OIM Analysis™ v8.5, an improved version of our renowned post-processing analysis software for EBSD. This new revision added compatibility with APEX 2.0 and support for OIM Matrix™, for dynamic pattern simulation and dictionary indexing, as well as a few significant upgrades to user functionality and ease-of-use.
Figure 4. Schematic of the dictionary indexing processes in OIM Matrix using a library of simulated patterns.
I want to give my sincere thanks to all the folks at EDAX who played a part in bringing each of these products to fruition in 2020. I appreciate the hard work you put in this year, in addition to the multiple years it takes to bring new products to market. I’m thankful that you’ve made my job easier as a salesperson, helping me keep customers excited and engaged with new products. And you’ve also played a significant part in advancing our customer’s research and productivity.
On a side note, I’d be remiss if I didn’t also say that I was thankful for the new sample preparation instruments, the Ilion II and PECS II, added to our product portfolio the AMETEK acquisition of Gatan this year. While the instruments themselves were not released in 2020, they are “new” to me, and I am very excited to introduce them to our customers moving forward. I believe they will allow the EBSD community to spend significantly less time preparing their samples for analysis while providing substantially better patterns than what they’re used to seeing through typical sample preparation techniques. We recently released an experiment brief on the subject.
Finally, I’m thankful for my health – I’ve lost about 15 pounds this year and feel like I’m in the best shape I’ve been in two decades. I’m also very thankful for my family, kids, and friends, whom I love and have loved me and supported me through all of 2020’s ups and downs. When I think of everything that has been going on in the world and how there are still so many good things going on in my life, considering all of the things that could have taken a turn for the worst, I’m thankful for that too. And all of that makes me enthusiastic and hopeful for a better year in 2021.
What are you thankful for?