VICKERS HARDNESS TESTER

Automatic or manual Vickers test?

This is one of the first questions we ask anyone who is considering purchasing a Vickers hardness tester.

But the answer is often not so straightforward, as many factors need to be taken into account.

It’s a consideration that needs to be based on several aspects:
How often would you like to use your Vickers hardness tester?
How thorough would you like the hardness assessments to be?
How many people will use the instrument?

SELECT A MANUAL HARDNESS TESTER IF

you only need to complete a few Vickers test cycles a month
the hardness tester is used by 2 people at most
you prefer single to multiple Vickers tests and you are not interested in complex patterns, such as case hardening and welding

select your manual hardness tester

SELECT AN AUTOMATIC HARDNESS TESTER IF

you need to complete several Vickers test cycles a month
the hardness tester is used by several people and you require access to customised software
you often require multiple Vickers tests rather than single Vickers tests, especially for case hardening and welding

select your automatic hardness tester

3 key factors to guide you in your choice

1. Automation allows better hardness resolution

If you need to carry out standardised welding or case hardening tests, keep in mind that a manual version would not be able to ensure the same performance levels of its automatic counterpart in terms of reproducibility, accuracy, speed and ease of execution.

2. How often do you perform a Vickers test?

The automatic hardness tester is much more suited for frequent use when compared with its manual counterpart.

If you carry out a substantial number of Vickers tests per month, an automatic instrument is certainly preferable, especially if used by several people and there is a need for registered access to the same, and personal user accounts.

If, on the other hand, its use is more limited, with only a few test cycles carried out every month, always by the same one or two individuals, then the manual hardness tester might be a better solution.

3. Sharing and contextualising the obtained Vickers values

When people think of a manual hardness tester, they immediately picture an analogue model. With this solution, Vickers test results could neither be shared nor contextualised, as they would be reduced to a simple list of numbers to be recorded by hand.

However, in an increasingly interconnected world, it is impossible to overlook parameters such as:

contestualizzazione dei valori Vickers ottenuti

tested batch details (type of treatment undergone, batch number, etc.)
number of Vickers test meeting or not meeting the specifications of reference
statistical processing of data (e.g. histograms, bar charts, pie charts, etc.)
images of the generated indentation depending on the selected indenter

This is why all our Vickers hardness testers, both manual and automatic, give and will always give the possibility of interconnecting and contextualising hardness values.

For us, therefore, manual and analogue are not synonymous.

Select the degree of artificial intelligence that best meets your needs: discover the various Vickers hardness tester versions, designed to offer different levels of technological performance.