Hi, I’m Todd Houlahan.
Welcome to the final installment in our Geochem Technical Tutorial Series.
I’m joined by Ted Shields again,
the Vanta XRF product manager. Hola Ted.
Hola Todd. What’s the plan for today?
The plan is to review the series,
summarize it and just provide a few
additional pieces of advice to make sure
you run your program smoothly.
And you wanted to start with the Vanta hardware, right?
Indeed. I just want to reinforce the message
regarding the front window.
To make sure it’s always kept clean
use a tissue or a wet wipe if there’s some dust on it.
And that it’s intact.
If it’s broken or split to replace it immediately.
And then run the blank to make sure
there’s no contamination on that front area of the analyzer
that could affect your results.
And I want to start with some software tips.
The idea is that you should keep your software up to date.
We release new features all the time
so it’s important that your Vanta is kept up to date
as well as if you’re using the PC software
that lets you run your Vanta from your PC,
that’s kept up to date as well.
You can schedule the Vanta to do it automatically for you, can’t you?
That’s right, if you’ve got a wireless dongle in the Vanta,
it will check for the latest software update
and download it automatically and all you have to do
is hit accept and your software is updated.
What about compatibility between the PC software
and the software on the Vanta?
Yeah they need to be kept at the same software version
so you can go and get the software
for the PC software at the IMS website.
Or the more current versions of that
have the same features as the Vanta
and it will go look for the software and download it
if your IT permissions lets you.
OK. Any other software tips?
Yeah I’ve got just one more.
The record is kept on the Vanta of your results,
that’s where the main record is,
and so you should hit the sync button in the PC software
to bring those results over into the PC software.
And we get a current copy of that that’s current and up to date.
Then you’ll have the data stored on the Vanta
and on your computer right? That’s correct.
OK, there’s a few more features that I want to cover
before we move any further.
Some of these have a few video tutorials in their own right.
The first is collimation.
I want to just touch on the fact that some of our instruments
can reduce the standard spot size that we measure
from the 9mm standard diameter down to 3mm.
This is just a reminder to make sure
that’s set as you want it to be set before each test.
Another option is the compound display feature
which lets you take things like silicon
or other light elements and display them in their oxide form
in their compound form. If you want we just multiply by the
conversion factor and display it that way
as a convenience for the user. Right.
Pseudo elements is the other one we should touch on.
It allows us to do some mathematical calculation
to the elemental concentration and display
the results of the mathematics on the screen
rather than the elements so we can ratio different elements.
We can sum different elements
and we can display whatever we want on the screen of the analyzer.
Customers have said they really like that.
Yeah that’s real popular.
Another popular one is to use the notes templates that we offer.
The geochem notes templates.
We have a standard template that will cover a lot of things
that people want to record.
Things like the operator, the project number
and those sorts of things.
But for whatever your uses are you can make your own template,
it’s completely customizable.
OK. One thing we want to make sure we reinforce
in this last video is the importance
of the way the sample is presented to the XRF.
Specifically sample density and sample thickness. Ted?
Yeah, in the factory we take the ideal scenario
where things are densely packed, the sample is densely packed,
it’s 10 to 15mm thick
and we’ve covered it with a Prolene film
that’s very x-ray transmissive.
But if the samples are not like that,
which is probably 75% of our customers,
we can still get good data, right?
Yeah you can get real useful results.
You’re probably going to get some trending
and there will be some effect due to the fact
that it’s not like what we calibrated with.
But like what we were saying with moisture a couple of videos back,
if we’re consistent,
we do the same thing over and over again,
our results will be relative to each other
and therefore useful to the majority of customers, right?
Yeah, exactly, just like that.
It’s the same sort of effect.
The one other thing we should note is that
you can reuse your sample cups but not the Prolene films.
The films are going to likely have contamination
but if you clean the cups you can reuse those.
Thanks to Ingrid from Innov-X Africa for that reminder.
Another important aspect is data management.
Data management is important because with pXRF
you can take a lot of data so you need to have a good protocol
to handle all that data in a good chain of custody.
We help that by having export templates
just like we had our notes templates,
you can set those up in the PC software and go from there.
Or you can export all your data
directly to the Olympus Scientific Cloud
which is a very secure environment.
We should also talk about
check your QA/QC results very regularly, daily preferably.
The reason is if there’s some suspect batches
or some data not quite right or your workflow,
your method has fallen down for whatever reason,
you can come and address that in real time.
You don’t have to wait weeks or months to address it.
That’s a good point. Another thing that
you should be aware of are spectral interferences.
We’ve dealt with most of these in the factory
so that the end users don’t need to be x-ray physics experts,
we’ve taken care of that.
But there are a few that people should be aware of.
And the most common one we get asked about regularly is . .
Is gold. Right.
Yeah, gold has a very crowded area of the spectrum
and people are interested in very low levels,
and some of those other elements that are nearby
can lead to some false positives
so it’s just something that you need to be aware of.
We’re obviously aware that fire assay
is the preferred technique to measure gold
but the reality for us is we have a lot of,
a large proportion of our customer base
are gold explorers and miners
either testing directly for gold
or using the pathfinder elements.
Yeah you can get some real useful information
and if your sample doesn’t have any of those conflicting elements
you can get down to 1 to 2ppm of gold.
Right. Any other spectral interferences we should . .
Yeah there are a few that are common,
there’s a triplet with titanium, vanadium, and barium.
There’s a lead arsenic effect
and higher levels of iron can affect chrome or cobalt.
Although we’ve done some really good work recently
because of the interest in battery metals
to distinguish low amounts of cobalt and high amounts of iron.
The best piece of advice we could give
is the importance of having someone within a company
to take ownership of the XRF program.
So what do you mean by ownership Todd?
Someone who champions the XRF,
takes ultimate responsibility,
maybe a superuser is a word that’s been used,
to take ultimate ownership of the quality of the data produced
and implementing the XRF throughout a company.
Ultimately someone or a few people
who can say the data collected is fit for purpose.
So what does a champion or superuser do?
They need to cover all the things
that we’ve tried to cover in this video series.
Yeah right and that starts with your data quality objectives.
You need to identify what it is you want to get out of that
and then do an orientation survey
to take a look to see if your process meets them.
Exactly and the orientation survey needs to cover
whether the factory calibration is working on your samples,
whether you need or want to adjust that factory calibration,
look at what sample preparation you might want to do,
the containers you’re using,
and the test times that you want to optimize it for.
And then, of course, you need a QA/QC program
to evaluate your data.
Once you evaluate the data from your orientation survey,
see if it meets your data quality objectives.
If it does then you’ve designed a successful pXRF testing program.
Easy. Easy.
The other piece of advice I do like to give
is to not turn your brain off
just because you’ve turned the instrument on.
Portable XRF has it’s strengths but it has it’s weaknesses.
It should be used as another tool in your toolbox
with your geopick, your hand lens, and your experience.
Any other closing words?
Just some thank you’s really.
Thanks to everyone who’s helped out with this videos series
specifically Marcus, Aaron, Alex,
thanks to you Ted, but also to our customers.
It’s our customers that we’ve learned most from,
working with this technology in the geochem industry.
So big thanks to you guys,
hopefully we can continue our partnership for many years to come.
Thanks again mate. You’re very welcome, any time.
It’s been fun, go well.