Located in Boulder, Colorado we maintain about 2,000 square feet of office and laboratory space. We house an array of different stereoscopic and petrographic microscopes. The petrographic workhorses are state of the art and include a Nikon® SMZ-1500 and a N®kon®E-POL 600. The SMZ-1500 has a 15:1 zoom ratio and is configured to provide a range of 3.75-180x magnification for reflected light studies of polished surfaces. The E-POL 600 is configured to provide both transmitted and reflected light illumination over a range of 50-500x magnification. Air void analyses are done at 80x magnification with an Olympus®stereomicroscope and Velmex® semi-automated stage.
For the preparation of polished slabs we use a 24-inch diameter oil-cooled Diamond Pacific®rock saw and a 10-inch water-cooled Makita®tile saw. We lap and polish large slabs with an 18 inch diameter Diamond Pacific®lapping wheel. This equipment allows us to handle and produce full cross sections of almost any core size with ease. Thin sections are done with a Buehler®Petro-Thin®and finished with a Buehler®Beta-Vector®polishing unit. The Beta-Vector is also used for polished sections for examination in the SEM/EDX. We prepare our thin sections and probe samples in a non-aqueous environment. We also house the necessary equipment for processing bulk aggregate samples for petrographic analysis, using a Gilmore®Ro-Tap®sieve shaker.
>In addition to its natural beauty, Boulder is a strategic location that allows us quick and easy access to a variety of external lab facilities in Boulder, Golden, and Denver for additional analytical capabilities. Our needs take us most often to the electron microscopy lab in the Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, where we have ready access to a FEI®Quanta 600 Environmental Scanning Electron Microscope equipped with a Princeton®Gamma-Tech Prism Energy Dispersive X-Ray Spectrometer.