Plastometrex has introduced its new MultiScale capability to help users capture high-resolution mechanical property variation across thin, welded, and complex geometries that are typically inaccessible to conventional mechanical testing.
It has been developed in a bid to address a 'common gap in mechanical testing.' MultiScale is said to enable direct testing on components and specimens as thin as 0.75 mm, extracting accurate mechanical data without destructive sectioning, while mapping mechanical properties across welds and complex geometries with 1.5 mm indent spacing to provide high-resolution insight into local variations and process performance.
This capability is powered by Plastometrex's Profilometry-based Indentation Plastometry (PIP) Testing technology, which extracts stress-strain curves from indentation test data using accelerated inverse finite element analysis, and is available to all PLX-Benchtop users through their CORSICA+ subscription.
PLX-Benchtop is a fast and compact system that non-destructively gathers yield and ultimate tensile strength (UTS) data from an automated five-minute test. The standard indenter size in every PLX-Benchtop device is 1000 µm; however, with the addition of the MultiScale capability, users are now said to have access to 250 µm and 500 µm indenters, allowing mechanical behaviour to be captured at a variety of scales.
Dr Jimmy Campbell, CTO at Plastometrex, said: “We developed the MultiScale capability to give engineers access to the data they’ve been missing. Many of our users work with parts that are too thin or geometrically complex for conventional mechanical testing. We wanted to change that, to make it possible to test the untestable and capture reliable property data wherever it’s needed.”
According to Plastometrex, MultiScale has already been used by NASA to characterise local variations in mechanical properties within spaceflight components. By mapping stress-strain responses across an additively manufactured part, process-structure-property relationships were revealed, which helped to inform manufacturing optimisation and reduce conservative safety factors. Yield strength is said to have fallen by approximately 15% as wall thickness decreased, an insight which, Plastometrex says, would have been missed by tensile testing
Dr Mike Coto, CCO at Plastometrex, added: “MultiScale gives users the ability to zoom in on the fine details that drive overall performance. That level of resolution supports more efficient design decisions, whether that means adjusting print parameters, refining weld procedures, or reducing unnecessary safety margins while maintaining structural integrity.”
