Gold & Precious Metal Analyzers

What is an XRF gold analyzer?

An XRF gold analyzer determines the purity and elemental composition of a precious metal item without damaging it. The instrument irradiates the sample with X-rays, the elements present fluoresce at their own characteristic energies, and the detector reads that spectrum back as a composition — gold, silver, platinum, palladium and the alloying elements alongside them.

Because nothing is scratched, melted or dissolved, the piece being tested goes back into stock or back to the customer exactly as it arrived. That is what makes XRF the working method for hallmarking, retail purchase verification and incoming-goods checks.

What is XRF gold testing used for?

XRF is used wherever a purity figure has to be produced quickly, repeatably and without consuming the sample. Across the Semsons Tech installed base that means five recurring situations.

• BIS hallmarking centres determining karat purity before marking the article.
• Jewellery retailers and pawnbrokers verifying purity on old-gold purchase and exchange.
• Refineries checking incoming material and verifying finished alloy.
• Banks and lenders valuing pledged gold.
• Customs and assay offices confirming declared composition.

Bench-top or portable: which analyzer format?

The format follows where the testing happens. A bench-top analyzer with a large sample chamber is the right instrument for a fixed testing desk handling a queue of items; a portable, PC-interfaced unit is for evaluation that has to travel to the item rather than the other way round.

• Signet FSDD — bench-top, Si-Pin detector, triple-stage W-target tube, 72 testable elements, ±0.03% accuracy on Au ≥ 96%, 368 × 298 × 86 mm chamber. The hallmarking and refinery workhorse.
• Signet Si-Pin — USA SIPIN detector at 165 ± 5 eV resolution with a 90° direct-angle closed-beam optical path and a larger 300 × 300 × 100 mm chamber. Built for refinery and laboratory work, including trace elements from Na (11) to U (92).
• Signet-PC — compact, PC-interfaced and portable, for retail counters, mobile evaluators and field auditors.

How do you choose a gold testing machine?

Match the instrument to the decision being made with its result. A retail counter confirming a customer's karat claim and a refinery quantifying trace elements are asking different questions of the same technology.

• What you need to measure: karat purity alone, or a full elemental breakdown.
• Accuracy required at the purity range you actually handle.
• Sample chamber size, which caps the largest item that can be tested without cutting it.
• Throughput — test times across this range run from 5 to 60 seconds per sample, selectable against the accuracy wanted.
• Whether the instrument stays at a desk or has to travel.
• Site conditions: mains supply, and — on the portable Signet-PC — a UPS and isolation transformer for stable readings.
• Software: whether qualitative screening is enough, or quantitative analysis and record-keeping are required.