Powtech Vox Pops – First Reactions to New Mastersizer Capabilities

How exciting is this? It is such a fantastic experience to see first-hand our customer’s reaction to the Hydro Sight and Hydro SV , new accessories for the Mastersizer 3000 which we launched at Powtech yesterday. It was great being part of the customer evaluation of the early prototype version of the Hydro Sight but this is even better.

Coming here to Powtech for my first product launch was actually quite nerve racking, but once I got into the first demonstration and showed off how the Hydro Sight allows users to visualise what is going on in their dispersion, I soon relaxed. The accessory takes images of the sample in-line with the laser diffraction measurement allowing us to see what is happening and to follow trends of dispersion or aggregation whilst the Hydro SV allows users to measure with very small amounts of sample.  So what did the first visitors to the stand have to say about the Mastersizer’s new capabilities?

A Mastersizer 2000 user from Croatia who was one of the first to see Hydro Sight commented: “Very impressive, this will be very useful for solving problems during method development. It should really help us when we come to transfer to MS 3000 in the next year or two.”

Englebert Prager, our distributor from Austria (Ing Prager Elektronik Handels GmbH) saw the two accessories for the first time yesterday. He was happy to see that Malvern had listened to customer feedback when designing the Hydro SV: “It’s really simple to use, just what our customers have asked for. We have one customer in particular who will find this very useful as they have a very expensive product and can’t use the amount required to be measured in the Hydro MV.”

He was also excited about Hydro Sight, saying, “It’s really good tool for solving dispersion problems and ‘seeing is believing’. People really like to see images to help get their dispersion under control.”

A customer from a large German chemical company was also very impressed by the Hydro Sight and said “Today if we want to visualise our particles we have to take a sample from the dispersion to a manual microscope, so to have both techniques in line looking at the same sample in real time getting pictures of particle during a laser diffraction measurement is a really big advantage for us as it saves time and is more reliable.”

One of our pharmaceutical customers commented about the SV, that not only does it allow him to measure very small amounts of samples, but also that he was very pleased to see how no special tools were needed to operate the it and that it could be fully controlled by an SOP from within the Mastersizer 3000 software.  He was also happy to see that we can add the sample direct to the cuvette without having to remove the measurement cell, using the pipette access to you can really monitor the obscuration.

Aside from all the great reactions to the new Mastersizer accessories, a highlight for the Malvern team yesterday was being filimed for a feature on Rote Couche Express (the Red Sofa Express ). You can see the resulting 90 second film on YouTube via this link. Rolf our sales manager in here in Germany had his makeup done in preparation, much to his delight!

We’re at Powtech, Hall1 Strand 357 until Thursday – if you’re there, please do come along and see the new Mastersizer accessories, along with all the other instruments we have on display.  You can also collect a limited edition Malvern mug, celebrating Mastersizer 3000’s third birthday.  Englebert Prager snapped his up, as you can see in the photo above.

If you’re not lucky enough to be visiting Powtech, and want to know more about the Mastersizer’s new capabilities, you can join our online lab party to celebrate the launch on 9th October.  Sign up to attend here.