Centurion-based testing-device manu-facturer Anjo Hardness Testers launched its portable hardness tester, the Kompakt Brinell Portable, last month. It is cheaper than competitor products offered locally, all of which are imported, and offers several advancements.

The Kompakt Brinell Portable is useful for performing hardness tests, from Brinell hard number (BHN) 90 up to BHN 600, or HBW 10/3000, on suitably accessible large and heavy components that cannot be easily moved to a tester.

It is also well suited to testing high volumes of same-sized, smaller components on a production line with ease and speed, which is lacking when using traditional portable hydraulic testers.

The device is typically used by steel merchants, and at heat-treatment plants, forges and found-ries, as well as general engineering shops that require Brinell hardness testing.

The Kompakt Brinell Portable hydraulic ram uses a 10 mm carbide ball to test samples.

Anjo Hardness Testers founder Andre Jooste tells Engineering News that the Kompakt Brinell Portable was developed as a cost-effective solution for the South African market, owing to all similar hardness testers being imported and, therefore, more costly because of the rand:dollar exchange rate.

Excluding value-added tax, imported hardness testers retail at about R125 000, while the Kompakt Brinell Portable sells for R81 775.90, thereby offering significant savings and ensuring that local manufacturing is boosted.

Further, Anjo Testers sought to overcome design defects that plagued the imported products, specifically nonreturning rams. Imported hardness testers require their hydrau-lic rams to be manually forced back into the test head before every test. “This is achieved by strenuous cranking of the carriage adjuster handle. This procedure is often overlooked and eventually leads to air entering the hydraulic system, resulting in unnecessary downtime and recalibration.”

The Kompakt Brinell Portable uses a self-returning ram that eliminates this problem and mitigates air ingestion, thereby improving the tester’s reliability and accuracy. This feature also speeds up testing of numerous steel samples, as the cycle time to change samples is made more efficient.

The device also features a tip-and-lock carriage height adjustment innovation, a mini jack-screw and a finely calibrated hydraulic pump. The hydraulics are sourced from a local distributor of US hydraulics company Enerpac Hydraulics. This system allows for highly repeatable and accurate Brinell hardness results.

“The device easily meets the loading specifi-cation for portable hydraulic equipment and is extremely useful when employed as a fast and easy-to-use tabletop tester,” notes Jooste.

Its large oil reservoir does not have the same issues like air ingestion of the much smaller oil reservoir of traditional hydraulic test heads, which result in the prospect of downtime.

“It is early days, but to date, there has been interest in the device from domestic resellers,” he concludes.