Deagglomeration

introduction the in built deagglomeration function within amics process allows for three different options to break up touching particles there are two automated processes to handle coarse grained material or fine grained material, and a manual recess allowing the user to manually separate each touching particle the deagglomeration process is an import part of the data reduction workflow, as touching particles can skew particle size, shape and liberation/locking results additionally, this process can also be used to subdivide block type measurements (i e thin section) to either remove measurement aretefacts or include/exclude sections of the sample block usage guide the following step by step instructions will be for the traditional use of the deagglomeration function, with more complex examples provided later in the document as the deagglomeration process is designed to separate touching particles, the data must be at the "particle" layer for the function to work in the case of block typ measurements, the data must first be converted to a particle measurement, and particulates using the particulate function step by step instructions once the data is in the appropriate format, that being a particle map and the visualization layer has been set to particle, the option to select deagglomeration will be come available in the top menu ribbon pressing the deagglomeration button will put amics process into deagglomeration mode, and allow for the manual separation of touching particles however, as the manual separation process is time consuming the best option is to use one of the two automated process these automated process can be accessed by pressing the down arrow located at the base of the deagglomeration button on the main menu ribbon the first option "standard deagglomeration" will run an automated process for larger particles where the particle to particle contact surfaces are relatively small compared to the perimeter of the particles the second option"fine deagglomeration" is design to for samples which are finer grained, and the surface contact length of touching particles is a more significant proportion of the total perimeter of the touching particles the final option for deaggloration is manual separation by the user, which allow for separtion of more complex touching particles, such as fine grained material with multiple contact points to perform a manual deagglomeration, the target particle first needs to be selected by left clicking the target particle the particle has been successfully selected if the mouse pointer changes from an arrow to a small knife icon once the knife icon can be seen, a slice can be inserted on the targeted touching particle by left clicking the start of the slice and dragging the knife pointer to describe the slice shape the user will be able to see the slice shape as a red outline will be drawn as the slice is being defined once the desired slicing surface has been defined, the selected particle can then be separated by pressing the “enter” button the user will notice that once the mouse button is released, the slice shape will change and seem to follow the a contoured surface this is because in amics data structure the segment layer is the smallest cell size as such a segment cannot be subdivided any further, and so amics will try to find the closest segment surface contour to the selected slice, and migrate the slice along the segment surface in the case of measurements acquired in segment acquisition mode, these contour surface are defined during analysis however, in the case of matrix mapping acquisition measurements, each x ray pixel constitutes a segment, and so can provide the ability to more finely define a deagglomeration slice limitations the user should be aware that for large sample, such as thin sections and rough rocks, the manual deaggloration routine described above will consume a large amount of computer resources, mainly memory it is recommended that users processing large sample sizes via the manual deaggloreration process should consider a workstation will faster process and larger memory capacity examples of feature trimming thin section and rough rock sample in addition to use the deagglormeration tool to separate out touching particles, the manual deagglormeration can be used to trim and modify large area analysis, like thin sections or rough rocks when mapping thin sections or rough rocks areas outside the sample is usually captured, which can cause error if there are impurities in the mounting material depending on the impurities, i e fine rock flour or glass thin section slide, the final bulk mineralogy could be incorrect in these cases using the manual deagglormeration tool will allow the user to “cut” out these extraneous regions of the analysis, and remove the contamination from the final calculations the process to do this is the same as described above, however, slice being defined by the user could not cut through measured rock, and not just background once the desired slice has been defined by the user, and executed by pressing the “enter” key, the user should then be able to select the newly sliced region, and delete it from the analysis access requirements a valid license with amics offline or amics online reviewer status comments