McFarland Instrumentation Services
I don’t think we could have done what we did without the help from NMSBA. There has been a return on that investment.
McFarland Instrumentation Services, Inc., designs and fabricates electronic instrumentation for analytical procedures and data analysis. To further helpcompanies with their instrumentation’s analytical needs, McFarland owner Malcolm Fowler wanted to validate the precision of his equipment. The certification he sought for the analytical procedures was not available in the commercial sector.
NMSBA connected Fowler with Deb Summa of Los Alamos National Laboratory, who assembled a team to help with the company’s instrumentation testing and measurements.
Using a unique high-resolution mass spectrometer, Summa and her team ran confirmatory tests on numerous materials with various gas compositions for catalytic activity. The team also helped prepare metal foils that were implanted with fluorine to modify their potential catalytic activity. Summa’s team then monitored and evaluated the measurements, providing Fowler with the results of the confirmatory testing.
McFarland Instrumentation was able to certify its analytical methods as a result of the evaluations from Summa’s team. With this information, the company subsequently secured contracts with a low-energy nuclear company in Chicago for $45,000, an amount that could increase in the future. Another company
in Texas is also pursuing the validation services of McFarland Instrumentation Services.