Due to the variability in the silver market, turnaround times and refining charges may be impacted. To inquire about how these changes may affect your business, please contact your account representative. We appreciate your continued business and thank you for your understanding in these unprecedented times.
Our refining customers as well as our product customers benefit from United’s advanced analytical services laboratory. Fire assay, x-ray analysis and ICP are all used to detect payable metals in a refining lot and as quality control so you know each jewelry manufacturing product you buy from United is pure and free of any dangerous metals like cadmium.
For jewelry manufacturers, United’s lab offers services like Plating Thickness Testing, Vickers Hardness Testing and Macbeth Color Measuring. These quality control tests help manufacturers maintain their standards when it comes to ensuring consistent results.
LEARN MORE ABOUT OUR ANALYTICAL SERVICES:
The fire assay procedure is an age-old practice and is most widely accepted as the standard in the jewelry industry when determining the gold and silver content. Making United superior with our speed and accuracy is our state-of-the-art analytical department. We perform three separate fire assays with each individual lot. To insure the maximum returns, we utilize our two-step process of fire assaying and X-ray Fluorescence.
The ICP equipment is a sophisticated high precision instrument used to measure any combination of metals to parts-per-million levels of accuracy. Extremely small traces of metals can be detected using this equipment. At United, we use the ICP equipment to determine all precious metals content in refining lots to parts-per-million levels so our customers can get the maximum return on their refining materials. All Platinum Group metals and alloys are also analyzed using the ICP equipment.
The Macbeth Color measuring equipment is used to precisely quantify or match the colors for an alloy. Using this equipment, we are able to duplicate a specific color required by our customers or differentiate between different tones of yellow and white colored alloys.
Plating Thickness or Precious Metal Thickness on Gold or Silver jewelry articles can be precisely measured by one of the non-destructive XRF pieces of equipment. Rhodium plating thickness can be measured with high accuracy using this equipment.
At United, we strive to provide our customers with products with superior and unique properties. The Vickers Hardness Testing data aids in the development of new alloys and products and the effect of the new alloying elements. All sheet and fabricated products are tested for their hardness to ensure proper quality.
The X-ray fluorescence is a non-destructive process and hence, it is used for applications where there is a need to maintain the integrity of the sample. All raw materials and products such as alloys, solders, sterling silver and gold bearing alloys are first tested in X-Ray Fluorescence equipment. At United, an analysis using XRF is done using three different kinds of XRF equipment where each instrument specializes in measuring a specific combination of metals.
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