Lab-Tools - Bespoke Scientific Instrumentation and Software - Bespoke Design for Industry and Academia

International sales of complete instrument packages have been made to the UK, France, Italy, Canada, Australia, the USA, and Japan. We are particularly knowledgeable about Nuclear Magnetic Resonamce (NMR) and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) instrumentation, but have also implemented instrumentation and software for a range of other disciplines including Ultrasonics, Fibre-Optics and SANS.

Designs are usually USB interfaced, and frequently incorporate field programmable gate array (FPGA) units to ensure high speed handling, in parallel, of the peripherals. Instrumentation can incorporate web-control and or web-monitoring interfaces, using a techique compatible with most fire-walls.

We have a wide range of existing designs that can be adapted, or we can design new instrumentation for you, so please do discuss with us designs that you may interested in commissioning.

Please E-mail us at Instrumentation@Lab-Tools.com

The R.F. processing is implemented in VLSI devices, the I.F. processing in a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) device, and the A.F. processing in the PC using an Array Programing language.
Note: The RF modules are Export Controlled devices.

Available Designs :

USB Direct Digital Synthesizer : frequency agile / sweeping: 0.001 to 150MHz, 14 bit

USB Averaging Analogue Data-Capture for Digital Scope / Transient Recorder/Averager uses : 0 to 65MS.s^-1, 12 bit.

USB R.F. Digital-Receiver, with direct digital sampling of the RF, quadrature 32 bit digitally controlled oscillators, three stages of FIR filtering, digital output gain scaling, followed by optional signal processing and Transient Recorder/Averager stage: 0.1 to 32MHz (below Nyquist), 12 bit.

Optional additional front-end pre-amp module : very low noise : sub-nanovolt.Hz^1/2, 120MHz bandwidth.

Optional data processing algorithms in firm-ware uploaded to a 100k gate FPGA over the USB interface.

Optional data processing algorithms in high-level array-manipulating languages.

If you have specific requirements that can be best encompassed at the design stage, please contact us regarding them : Instrumentation@Lab-Tools.com

DESIGN FIELDS.

APPARATUS DESIGNED AND IMPLEMENTED.

• NMR Spectrometer: Transmitter, Receiver, Pulse Programmer, Power Supply.
  (Over 20 implemented, more than 10 used at UKC, about 10 sold internationally.)
• NMR Pulsed Magnetic Field Gradient apparatus.
• NMR Gradient Probes and timing circuits.
• NMR 1200K Furnace Probe.
• NMR Magnet Current Stabilizer.
• NMR Transient Data Capture and Processor v1, v2.
• Timing Circuit for Bruker Pulsed Field Gradient Unit.
• World's first NMR scanning Cryoporometer.
• NMR Cryoporometers based on Maran Spectrometers.
• Ultra precision NMR pulsed magnetic field gradient drive unit.
• NMR 100MHz 300C variable temperature magnetic gradient probe:
• NMR 300MHz 300C variable temperature probe.
• Mobile NMR devices, including NMR MICE and "Column Huggers".
• SANS Online and Offline 2D Area Detector Data Analyser.
• Fibre-Optic Bragg Grating Scanner and Data-Logger.
• 1D NMR Imager with novel methodology.

Design and Implementation Methodology

A few examples of the software.

Recent Item:

Net-Control :

Home Automation : Turn-up your central heating from the office.
Industrial Control : Monitor the plant while on tbe road.
Researchers : Control your experiment from home.

Build-a-Page :

This is the first of a series of tools based on well-tested software widgets created for the Kentish music web-page www.KentFolk.com

Pine2CE v1.1 :

Earlier Designs, some available for free download

Software Taster.

To celebrate the success of the Nasa Rover "Spirit" in bringing back colour stereo pictures of crater Gusev on Mars, the following Stereo Panoramic Viewer was written over the next few days. This enables viewers to stereoscopically pan around and zoom into the pictures of Mars, without needing special viewing hardware. This works for both monochrome and colour stereo panoramas. Learn more : StereoPanorama a viewer and manipulator for Panoramic Stereo images. Written using MicroApl's AplX array language interpreter, this compact application (125 kBytes) makes good use of the array manipulation capabilities of Apl, MicroApl's implementation aiding the graphic import/display/export.

A view into part of the first B+W stereo pair of panoramic images from "Spirit"'s navigational cameras. The high-resolution cameras return panoramic stereo images in colour.

Algorithms :

Monotonic filter Do you have a signal that should (in a certain range) always be increasing (i.e. a tank filling) or decreasing (i.e. an object cooling) but for which the measured signal has fluctuations? Monotonic will do a good job of extracting the underlying trend, removing much of the noise, without having a characteristic 'width' like conventional averaging/bandwidth filtering algorithms. It's main disadvantage is that it is an N2 algorithm, but with current processor speeds that is usually of no consequence.

Windows Tools :

Transient Processor v2.1 For capturing, displaying and manipulating transient laboratory data, this PC based instrument offers many advantages, while handling like a traditional oscilloscope. It is based on a standard Pentium PC, uses National Instruments cards and is programmed in LabView.

Convert Thermocouple EMF to Temperature An easy to use Windows tool to convert signals from a thermocouple to temperature. So far only for Copper-Constantan (Type T) thermocouples. Based on NIST calibration ITS90. It is programmed and compiled using LabView. This is freely downloadable, but if you use it for work or to make money, donations would be appreciated - then I might add some of the other thermocouple types and place more freely downloadable offerings on this web page.

Unix Tools :

DoD22 : Show and Analyse Area Multidetector Data for ILL D22 Highly specialised, this program is placed here for the benefit of users of Small Angle Neutron Scattering Diffractometers at the Institute Max von Laue - Paul Langevin in Grenoble, France. DoD22 obtains the configuration information it needs from the stored parameter tables associated with each set of area detector data. Thus it can convert lists and ranges of measurement runs to I(q) with no further user intervention needed. It has three modes : Show, Programmable, Analyse.