Smiths Detection launches handheld spectrometer to identify suspicious substances

April 24, 2009

Integrated security solutions provider Smiths Detection (Danbury, CT) launched its HazMatID Ranger worldwide, following its successful introduction in the U.S. last May. The HazMatID Ranger chemical spectrometer is designed for handheld, backpack, or robot portability and features touch-to-sample operation using Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) technology.

Gail Overton

Analysis is performed by simply touching a diamond ATR sensor tip directly to a sample. The HazMatID Ranger provides both spectral results and a list of probable substances to aid in the responders' capability to identify chemicals, as well as components in mixtures. It provides identification of over 32,000 substances including white powders, explosives, pesticides, narcotics, common and toxic industrial chemicals.

Mal Maginnis, president, Global Military and Emergency Responders for Smiths Detection, said, "We continue to adapt proven technologies to be smaller, lighter, multi-purposed and integrated in order to meet the many challenges our customers face."

For more information, go to www.smithsdetection.com.

About the Author

Gail Overton | Senior Editor (2004-2020)

Gail has more than 30 years of engineering, marketing, product management, and editorial experience in the photonics and optical communications industry. Before joining the staff at Laser Focus World in 2004, she held many product management and product marketing roles in the fiber-optics industry, most notably at Hughes (El Segundo, CA), GTE Labs (Waltham, MA), Corning (Corning, NY), Photon Kinetics (Beaverton, OR), and Newport Corporation (Irvine, CA). During her marketing career, Gail published articles in WDM Solutions and Sensors magazine and traveled internationally to conduct product and sales training. Gail received her BS degree in physics, with an emphasis in optics, from San Diego State University in San Diego, CA in May 1986.