TIMA X TESCAN Now Offered in Burnaby

Recently, our mineralogical team in Burnaby, BC has added the Tescan Integrated Mineral Analyser (TIMA-X) into their in-house capabilities to help continue delivering the trusted automated mineralogical experience for a variety of ores (strategic metals, base and precious metals, industrial minerals and others), and other analytical techniques. The detection limits and fine textural data collection and interpretation are currently greatly improved using new advancements in automated mineralogy technology.

TIMA-X is one of the newest and most versatile automated mineralogy systems to provide rapid quantitative analysis of samples including:
• Ores
• Concentrates
• Rocks
• Tailings
• Leach Residues
• Smelter Products

The TIMA-X configuration uses four Energy Dispersive X-Ray (EDX) silicon drift detectors (SDD) attached to a TESCAN MIRA (field-emission gun – FEG) platform, which also includes backscattered electron (BSE) and secondary electron (SE) detectors. The full integration of hardware and software significantly enhances performance and reliability. The TIMA-X system combines both the EDX and BSE signals to identify minerals at each measurement point (or each homogeneous segment of a grain, depending upon the analysis mode). The EDX spectra (and BSE data) are compared to entries in a mineral library on a first match principle to identify the mineral phase. Therefore, directly acquired chemical compositions of each phase, collected during the measurements, can be used for mineral assay reconciliation to ensure best in class mineral to assay data validation. The SGS configuration of the TIMA-X software applications allows for determination of mineral concentrations, elemental distributions and mineral textural properties such as:
• Grain size
• Liberation and locking parameters
• Association and exposure
• Mineral release and predictive grad-recovery response

TIMA-X introduces several novel approaches in the search for minerals of interest (bright phases search) including gold, silver, rare earths, platinum, and it is optimized to detect sub-micron inclusions and rapidly acquired low-count spectra.

Our trusted automated mineralogy and team of professionals provides significant input required for informed strategic decisions. Adding TESCAN’s TIMA-X technology enhances our current suite of SGS’ automated mineralogy capabilities in Burnaby that have been offering across Canada and worldwide. TIMA-X provides better detection limits, superior imaging and faster turn around times, and results, coupled with advanced interpretations, yield a holistic solution. Contact us anytime to learn how incorporating our automated mineralogy services can help your projects today!