Instrument Demo | Ayríís
Hi, it’s Daniel from KRÜSS! In this video, I’ll introduce Ayríís, our latest mobile stand-alone instrument for intuitive, user-independent quality control of surfaces. It is the first instrument that comes with our revolutionary 3D Contact Angle method. Join me for a brief introduction to the typical applications and industries where Ayríís is being used and the unique features that Ayríís offers. We’ll have a short look at the instrument, then move to a demonstration, where we’ll set up Ayríís and perform measurements on four different kinds of typical samples. Afterwards, we’ll look at the results.
You’ll see it’s simple and straightforward. So, let’s get started! Ayríís is the right choice wherever the quality of a surface needs to be controlled. Checking the activation level after a plasma, corona or flame treatment is one of the main applications, just like controlling the cleanliness of a surface before a coating or an adhesive bonding process.
And because these processes are so widespread among all kinds of industries, Ayríís can be found in the automotive, aviation, electronics, flexible packaging, and printing industries, alike. Ayríís was developed with a focus on quality control applications. It is the easiest and fastest way to measure water contact angles, while also meeting the QC requirements for robustness and user-independence. The instrument is mobile, which allows you to bring the lab to the sample, rather than the other way round. Predefined templates and the unique 3D Contact Angle method that was developed for Ayríís make each measurement completely user-independent.
Anyone can use Ayríís: just click the button and get a clear OK, Not OK result. No matter who performs the measurement, you always get the same clear result. Thus, Ayríís can even be used without any background in surface science. Another point worth mentioning is that Ayríís can also be seamlessly integrated into a production line.
The software supports Application Programming Interface or short API integration, so for instance, you can mount Ayríís on a robotic arm for fully integrated process control. So, let’s have a closer look at Ayríís. It is pretty packed with electronics, yet it comes with a design that optimizes ergonomics and mobility. You’ll see that there are only two buttons, which both have the same functions. Turning Ayríís on and off, confirming actions and of course starting a measurement.
The buttons ensure optimal handling whether you are measuring horizontally, vertically, or upside-down on a surface. Here is a large, 4" touch display that offers straightforward control of the instrument. On the side, there is a USB-C socket that can be used for data transfer or if you want to charge the battery pack inside the instrument. So, let’s come to the measuring head where it gets exciting.
If we take a look from the bottom of the instrument, you can see the nozzle that is used for drop deposition, as well as a light dome of 90 LEDs, the heart of our cutting-edge 3D Contact Angle method. By starting a measurement, a series of light patterns is shone onto the drop, and their reflections are detected by two cameras. This process only takes fractions of a second and as a result, the three-dimensional shape of the drop is reconstructed with the highest precision.
We will see the process in the measurements in a moment. Okay, let’s set up Ayríís. First, I insert a battery into the instrument. Therefore I remove this cover and here is a battery pack that I can slide into the instrument here.
So, Ayríís is now switched on. Ayríís is designed for 24/7 use and utilizes replaceable, rechargeable batteries. These can be charged either internally via the instrument's USB port or with an external charger allowing you to work with close to no interruption. So, let’s put a cartridge into the instrument.
The cartridges are prefilled with 4 mL of high-purity distilled water. We guarantee its quality, so you don’t have to worry about liquid handling and contamination. For a typical drop volume of 2 µL, this means 2000 measurements and with the instrument's minimum drop volume of 1 µL, even up to 4000 measurements.
And with the information stored on the RFID chip in the cartridge, Ayríís will let you know when it’s time for an exchange. So, I take out this part here, slide in the cartridge and slide it back into the instrument. So, Ayríís now shows us an information box that it needs a flush to ensure that there are no impurities in the dosing system which could alter the measuring results.
This is typically required once after inserting a new cartridge or if no measurements have been made for one day. Ayríís will remind you when it’s necessary, so you won’t forget. I click the OK button and the instrument starts the flushing process. Okay, Ayríís is now up and running.
Before we start with the measurements, it is important to mention that Ayríís differentiates between two types of users, each with their own access rights. The admin can access all settings of the instrument, for example, creating measurement presets, deleting results and creating a new user. The operator, on the other hand, has limited access rights, mainly allowing them to perform measurements and to view and export results. Alright, let’s log in as an admin. So I type in the password which is four times 0.
and here we enter the home screen where we can choose to either measure, define samples or to view results. On the top you can see the battery filling level, the cartridge’s filling level, the user that’s logged in and the time. So let’s create a new user that’s supposed to perform the measurements.
You can do this here under settings. Then we go into configuration and user management and here we can add a new user. This new user needs a name. Let’s call him John and the role would be operator and not administrator. We need to give a login name.
This can be John as well, and we need to assign a pin code. This could be something simple, like 1234, and now we can save. Here you see our new user John together with the administrator now.
Again, while the admin has full access rights, the operator will only be able to measure and check and export the results. Let’s move on to the measurement part, where we are going to test four different samples. Here is the first sample, a transparent thin polyethylene foil as produced in huge quantities for flexible packaging. Printing or coating on such a foil is difficult unless it has been corona activated to increase surface energy to sufficient levels.
I have brought two sheets. One has not been corona treated, the other one has. Before we check their treatment levels and switch our role to the operator, we must create a sample type which is a kind of measurement preset for our first sample. To do this, we go back to the home screen and click on define samples and here we can add a sample type.
First, the sample type needs a name. Let’s simply type in "foil", so we can identify this. Then the drop volume is set to 2 μL. 2 μL is standard.
And then we set the quality limits of our sample type by defining the minimum and maximum contact angles. The minimum I set to 50°, the maximum would be 80° contact angle. That's how we make sure that the surface is clean enough for the upcoming printing or coating step. The OK/Not OK criteria typically can be determined by correlating the observed quality of a part with contact angle measurements. For example, if crosshatch testing is being applied to check for good adhesion of an ink that’s being printed onto the foil, the OK part that passes this test will show contact angles in a certain range, while the Not OK part will fail the crosshatch test and will show contact angles outside this range and this indicates improper surface preparation.
Once determined, the contact angle range for OK samples that will pass the crosshatch test can be set into our sample type template and will give a simple OK or Not OK result to the user. The drop stabilization can remain at 500 ms and you would only have to change this in case you expect vibrations directly after dosing or anything that would cause a change of the drop shape over some milliseconds or seconds. Then we can set this to higher numbers. Then we can set the number of drops. So this will be the number of drops and from all those drops, the mean contact angle will be calculated and be given out as a result on the display.
Let's set this to 3 to have a certain statistics but also keep it rather short. Then next we can choose how to identify the samples. We have no identification or we can choose to have a batch number identification where individual parts of batches are given certain numbers and we have the option to have serial number identification.
At the very end, we can add some details that are then being displayed to the user before he or she starts the measurement. I now save the sample type here and you can see "foil" is now one sample type defined in our Ayríís. If you have multiple Ayríís in use across different locations and you want all of them to measure according to the same procedure for the same sample types, it comes in handy to simply share and import sample types.
I’ll show this here using a USB stick. Here I have stored the three other sample types for the samples we are planning to measure and I simply connect the USB stick here to our Ayríís instrument and from the home screen I can now go into settings and configuration and here we have the option to import and export. And if I now click on import from USB I can select whether to import the sample types or also to choose the users. We just want to import the sample types, click on yes, and I get an indication that the import is completed. I confirm with OK, and now I can remove the USB stick from the instrument and now we will switch to the user operator and then we can start performing our first measurements. To do this, I go back into our settings and I log out the administrator.
I select our user John, type in the password that we’ve assigned and now I’m ready to perform the measurements. OK, let’s check the treatment level and see if any of the foils is ready to print and find out if Ayríís can tell the difference. I go to measure and select the sample type "foil," which we’ve just created. I click the button and now you can already see the 90 LEDs have already been switched on.
Ok, we are going to measure three times on each sample to get a result. I place the instrument onto our first foil and click the button again to execute the actual measurement. Now you can see the color around the button changes from blue to orange for a short period of time indicating that the measurement is in progress. Then we get a short information box here saying that please don’t move the Ayríís instrument. Shortly after that, we get a second box that says it’s OK to move and the calculation is going on.
And now the first measurement is already done and we can move the instrument to the second position and repeat this process. Again, click the button, the color changes to orange and back to blue again. This was the second drop. Now we move further to the third position, repeat everything, computing results and we get a QC failed indication here in red and also a red cross indicating that we are out of the specification that we’ve set in our template. The minimum was 50°, the maximum 80° for our OK criteria and the result is 94.2°. So this foil has clearly not been corona treated, so my attempt to fool Ayríís did not work.
The lack of corona activation was easily detected by the instrument. Let’s see if things look differently on the activated foil. So again, I place Ayríís on the foil and start a measurement. The first drop is being dosed and being analyzed. Now I switch to the second position and repeat the measurement and move on to the third position to do a third measurement. And now we get a QC passed information indicated by this green color.
So it tells us that we've got an OK sample and if we look at the content angle result it's 69.7°. It’s well within our range between 50° and 80°. So, this sample, this foil, was corona activated and Ayríís could clearly help to spot the difference which is invisible to the eye. So let’s have a closer look at the results. We can go back to the home screen and from here go to view results. Here all measurements are stored and we'll later see how to export.
You can also filter for example for sample type and if I click onto one of our results here on the OK foil, for example, I see the mean contact angle value and all the information I need. The individual drop images, image number one, drop number two and also drop number three as I scroll along. So everything is stored inside your result tile and can be imported and exported as well.
So moving on to sample number two. Here is a lightweight aluminum metal part for an engine. Typically, there’s an area where a sealing will be applied, just right here, and this needs proper cleaning. So let’s check the cleanliness of our aluminum block and see if the part is clean enough for the next production step, which is bonding.
Starting from the home screen, we choose "measure" and select the sample type "Engine," which we imported earlier from the USB stick. It's important to mention that this and the following sample types are created in such a way that only one measurement is required to get a result. I now position Ayríís onto our sealing area.
The live camera images here and the blue crosshair help us to position the instrument precisely here on the sealing area. I click the button to execute the measurement and we get the indication, QC passed, so our contact angle is 57°, which is well in between the OK range of 40° and 80°. So, okay, on to our third sample. Let’s put the engine part back and this would be our third sample here.
This is an artificial leather-like skin. It’s meant to be used as a decorative element in automotive interior. So you may have seen this side from the inside of a car and the other side looks like this. This is the one where an adhesive would be applied for proper adhesive bonding. The material has a low surface energy, so this makes it really hard to bond properly. So before applying an adhesive bonding and connecting it to a structural part of, let’s say, a dashboard cover, this skin is typically flame-treated for activation.
In this process, the surface energy will be increased to levels high enough for good adhesive bonding. The skin is black, structured, soft, hard to measure accurately is what comes to your mind when you're familiar with contact angle measurements. Let’s see if Ayríís can tell us right away if the flaming process has gone perfectly fine, and if we have a ready-to-stick part. So I’ll start another measurement, clicking on "measure" and choosing the according sample type, which is called "Artificial leather".
And now I can position the instrument onto our sample, click the button to execute the measurement, and after a short while, we’ll get our result. QC passed, so the flame treatment was successful. We are within our OK specification range with a 68.4° contact angle. Okay, so much for our third sample. Let’s move on to sample number four, which is a really big one. This is a car bumper, a raw bumper which is typically made out of PC-ABS plastic.
A material that requires proper surface activation before a coating step can be carried out. Again, flame treatment is probably the most widespread option to treat a bumper and make it ready to coat. A bumper is a large sample, but rather than cutting out a piece and bringing it to the lab, we can bring Ayríís to the bumper and measure on all positions without destroying the bumper.
Even vertically, as I will demonstrate in a second. This works because the drops we are using are small, 1 μL in this case, so gravity doesn’t affect them and they stay in position. Now again, I go to measure and I choose "Bumper" as a sample type and what I want to show you for this last sample is that Ayríís offers protection against measuring wrong results. With typical contact angle instruments, you will need an experienced person to optimize the light settings, baseline, camera settings, and drop deposition for such a challenging sample to get reliable contact angle readings. The beautiful thing about Ayríís and the 3D Contact Angle method is that it does all of this for you. No expert needed to perform good measurements, the instrument does the job.
I will now deliberately shake the instrument while performing the first measurement. So, I position Ayríís here on the sample, start the measurement and you see I move this instrument a little back and forth, swinging, and on the display, you can see a message: "Too much motion detected,..." Basically, instead of getting a wrong result, the instrument tells me to repeat the measurement and keeping the instrument more steady. This is very valuable for quality control because if you get a result, you know it is valid.
So, here you can see the dosed drop and let's repeat the measurement for another spot and this time I will keep steady. I confirm here the message in the display with OK. This time, I try to keep the instrument steady and perform the measurement again. Now we get a contact angle result indicating that everything went OK. You can see the message "QC passed," and we read a contact angle value of 74.5°,
which is well within our specified OK range. Alright, those were the measurements. Let’s recap and have a look at the results from all of our measurements.
From the home screen, I click on view results and here we can have an overview of all our measurements that we have performed today. We have our two PE foils, one was non-activated, the other one was corona activated, which we could clearly differentiate here. We had our engine sealing groove, where we could see that this is clean enough for the sealing step. We had our artificial leather sample, which is also indicated in green, showing that the activation was well within specification to do the following bonding step. And we have our bumper result here, also indicated in green, showing that the bumper is now ready to be coated.
We can now export all those measurements and for this, I take our USB stick again and connect it to Ayríís, just like we did for the importing of our sample types two, three, and four. I keep my finger on the screen here and you can see now that some checkboxes appear here. And now I can choose which of the measurements I want to export. I select all of them.
I go on this export button here and now I can select what format I would like to have for export. PDF, a CSV file, a PNG to have the drop images or the whole measurement to be shared with other colleagues, for example. I confirm with yes and now the measurement export is running. Let’s tidy up and put this thing aside.
Okay, measurement export was completed, so I confirm with OK and we can unplug the USB stick and plug it into my laptop to have a look at the exported data. So, I open the folder with the exports on our USB drive. You see we have four folders: csv, measurement, pdf, and png. The CSV file can be imported into Excel, so I open Excel, open a blank workbook and under Data and from Text/CSV, we can import those files from our USB stick. I click on Load and here we have now several columns with all the relevant information for the five measurements that we have performed today.
Template name so you can see what measurement belongs to what number here, the minimum and maximum contact angle threshold, the measured contact angle, and whether or not the quality was passed or failed. Next, we have the raw measurement files. Those are files with a VTM ending and you can load these into either your Ayríís or any other Ayríís to have a look at the measurements again on your instrument. Then we have PDF files. If we open one of these, we have a measurement report with every important information from the measurement, a summary, results, parameters that we used, the instrument with the serial number, and also information about the cartridge with the water inside so that we can track everything, which is important for the quality control, of course. Finally, there is a folder with PNG files.
Those are the raw drop images that were recorded with each measurement. Also, if I open one of those images, you see here the water drop that has been dosed and measured with the reflected LED light pattern here and this raw drop image is also documented and exported here onto our USB drive. So much for the exports. Okay, anything else to say? Well, since we’re talking about a quality control instrument, it’s worth mentioning calibration and adjustment options to ensure optimal measurement results every time.
It’s easily done, going to the home screen, then clicking on the settings. Here we have calibration and adjustment. You see there are two options: we have the volume check and the contact angle calibration and the details tell us when the last time the volume check and the contact angle calibration were performed. So let’s start with the volume check.
The drop volume is an important factor and thus it needs to be checked regularly. We advise you to do this at least once a week or whenever you swap cartridges. The details, as I mentioned, tell you here when the last time the volume check was done and you can also set a reminder so you make sure the volume check is done regularly. Now here is a little accessory, our solid sample that is used for volume calibration. If we click here on volume check, the volume check starts. The display guides us through the procedure.
So, basically, three 1 μL drops and then three 2 μL drops are being dosed. If their detected volume exceeds a deviation of 1%, we can adjust the dosing volume and then perform another volume check. You see the procedure consists of six steps and we now position Ayríís onto our solid sample. And I press the button and a first drop of 1 µL is being dosed and analyzed.
And now we are at step two. So, I just position it next to the first drop, click again to dose a second drop. Now step number three. Now step number four. The 2 µL drops are now being dosed.
Step number five. And finally, step number six. Okay, volume check was successful and within the expected tolerance, as indicated by the green mark. So we can now confirm by clicking on adjust and the volume check has been executed successfully.
So let’s move on to the contact angle calibration. With this calibration, you can check the accuracy of the contact angle detection for your Ayríís. For this, there is a contact angle standard set, available as an accessory. It consists of a small sphere, which is the contact angle standard that has a defined radius and simulates a 2 µL drop with a 37.75° contact angle. It also comes with a stand with two guided pins that help you to position Ayríís correctly and a certificate attesting to the accuracy of the standard. Okay, to perform a calibration, select "contact angle calibration" and then the instrument will guide you through the procedure.
First step would be to position the Ayríís. So first we position the instrument. And then we perform the calibration by clicking on the button. With the calibration, we ensure that the radius measured by Ayríís matches the verified standard radius. So now the measurement is performed and we get a result of 37.79° contact angle and 2.4964 mm. Typically, we would advise you to do this ten times and document the results properly.
For the sake of simplicity in the video, we just do it once to show the proof of concept of how it’s done. Now we are finished with the calibration and know that the 3D Contact Angle method works accurately. Okay, and that’s all for our demonstration. Thanks for watching as I used Ayríís, our mobile, innovative, and robust contact angle measurement instrument that’s the perfect fit for surface inspection in quality control. I hope you’ve enjoyed learning about our 3D Contact Angle method, especially its ability for user-independent testing.
Stay tuned and bye bye.
2025-01-05 18:14
