Helmut Fischer GmbH has been developing and manufacturing high-precision measuring instruments for coat thickness measurement, material analysis, material testing and microhardness for industry and laboratories. The Sindelfingen-based group of companies is one of the world's technology leaders with its broad product portfolio. The FISCHERSCOPE® HM 2000 recording hardness measuring instrument has been successfully used in teaching and research for many years and determines quantities such as indentation hardness and elastic modulus in a depth-dependent manner - and in the nanometer range.

The students and researchers of materials engineering at the Ernst Abbe University of Applied Sciences Jena can now look forward to a new measuring device from the Fischer company: represented by Mr. Wladislaw Feuchtenberger, Fischer handed over the scratch tester FISCHERSCOPE^® ST 200 to its future destiny at the EAH Jena on November 15, 2021. Mr. Feuchtenberger is himself a graduate of materials engineering at EAH Jena and is currently responsible for application technology at Fischer in the fields of nanoindentation and scratch testing.

In scratch testing, a Rockwell diamond syringe is drawn across the surface of a sample at a constant speed and with a defined normal force. The resulting scratch provides information on how the material or coating will behave under mechanical stress in real life. In industry and research, for example, the cohesion and adhesion properties of coatings are tested in this way and specifically developed further.

Prof. Maik Kunert, active in the department "SciTec - Precision Optics Materials" took receipt of the new device. It will be used in teaching and research in the future. Initial ideas for its use in research already exist: for example, models for the quantitative description of abrasive wear of modern highly wear-resistant TRIP steels are to be developed.