Brain like a sieve? Compare laser diffraction and sieving for particle size measurements

Some of my colleagues might say that I have a brain like a sieve : I’m not sure, but I don’t think they mean I classify everything into discrete particle size fractions 🙂 !

Sieving is still a very widely used technique in many industries where particle size is important, however laser diffraction is now being used routinely by many of these industries to gain much more detailed and robust particle size measurements.

If you’re thinking of switching from sieving to laser diffraction for your particle size measurements, Malvern have put together a handy guide Top 10 things to consider between laser diffraction and sieving and differences in technology.

We also make it easy within our instrument software to display particle size results in terms of % passing a particular mesh size for both the Mastersizer and Morphologi instruments. This way the user can compare results and get a better understanding of the similarities and differences between the techniques.

Below is an example for Mica particles measured on the Morphologi G3 imaging instrument. Sieve sizes for ASTM, BS, ISO and Talyor sieve sets are now also available in the latest version of the Mastersizer 3000 software.