USA KINO makes comprehensive analysis of both merit and demerit of various optical contact angle meters around the world. And SL200K series are our update products in terms of long-term experience in R&D and on-site production. For the purpose of cost control and performance improvement, comprehensive optimization has been made in mechanism and optical system; Software design to maintain movement of sample stage and lens stability and to provide high definition and performance images.

More accurate, stable and diversified mechanical system

1. Precision positioning stage, linear guide, screw technology used in mechanical system, with precision up to 0.01mm by manual and 0.5μm by software control respectively.

2. Uniquely-designed mechanism of up to 10 axis control (6-axis linear adjustments +1 rotation adjustment + 3 horizontal adjustments), coordinate the operation of sample stage, lens, camera and dosing system.

3. Zero-backlash and low error on-axis optical positioning stage guarantees stability, repeatability and exceptionally smooth motion.

4. Professional high-precision syringe pump system with accuracy of droplet control down to 0.02μL or even nL (optional), which can be applied to high-precision repetitive liquid dosing.

5. Flexible focus control system and micro distance of needles moving (about 0.01mm) makes more accurate and easier operation of transferring drops, especially for super-hydrophobic biomimetic material surface test.

6. Integrate designed instrument with mainframe made of high-grade aviation aluminum guarantees its handiness and fastness.

More professional and comfortable design of mechanism

1. Unique mechanism of fixed focal distance and high-precision adjustable positioning stage, with easier and more accurate focal distance obtaining and clearer image shape.

2. Integral rotation system controlled by rotation positioning stage, enabling sample stage to rotate with lens in order to hold drop image in field of view during capture process. The unique design makes accurate analysis of roll off contact angle possible without hard operation and bad precision when rolling the entire instrument, as well as avoiding drop disappearing from the field of view when partially rotating. Besides, just a simple switch can enable of sample stage rotating only. (Manual and electronic tilting base for option).

3. Soft light plate made of frosted quartz glass achieves clearer, sharper and softer background light and better drop shape.

4. Unique design of syringe replaceable direct dosing system makes it easy to hold KINO’s OEM syringe or special syringe with PTFE needle, ultra-thin needle (OD:0.23mm) for measuring hydrophobic material and syringe measuring medium / high viscosity sample.

5. System with four levelness adjustment units:

Except one complete machine levelness adjustment via quadrupled tuning knob and one precision tilting angle adjustment of lens and camera via 1 axis tilt platform stage with micrometer, we provide one multi-axis tilt platform with micrometer to adjust the levelness of sample stage and one zero-backlash rotation stage to roll the sample stage. All these guarantee the accuracy of base line detection and the measurement of roll-off contact angle.

6. Adjustment both by hardware and software with better base line detection.

The levelness adjusting mechanism, illumination-adjustable LED cold light source as well as CAST® 3.0 software system provide you strong assurance of better base lines detection, and more convenient measurement of roll-off contact angle and advancing/receding contact angle.

Sharper edge and high-speed optical vision system

1. Illumination-adjustable cold LED light source technology with sharper and clearer drop contour profile shape, effectively avoiding drop evaporation caused by excessive heat.

2. Higher quality camera with speed of 87-340FPS made in Germany (standard WVGA format). (Optional with cameras of 130M, 300M, 500M)

3. Continuous-zoom industrial lens of high-magnification, with range of magnification 0.35-4.5X.

4. USB2.0 standard port provides faster speed and higher compatibility with laptops and newly designed desktops, free from incompatibility or inconvenience of inserting image capture cards or 1394B PCI express card.

5. Optional with high-speed cameras with AOI technology (speed of 100FPS, 300FPS, 1000FPS are available)

6. Optional with GigE or CameraLink cameras for faster data transmission and better stability.

Interfacial chemical analytical system (ADSA^TM) CAST 3.0 with more functionalities and more comfortable user interface

1. Six drop shape states for analysis:

Sessile drop (liquid/gas, liquid/liquid/gas), pendant drop, captive drop, tilted plate and oscillated drop

2. Seven methods to calculate contact angle and nearly 20 kinds of curve-fitting technologies:

(1) Exclusive methods of θ/2, circle fitting, ellipse fitting, RealDrop^TM, spline curve-fitting, Young-Laplace equation fitting, curve ruler (tangent method);

(2) Dynamic / static contact angle measurement

(3) 20 exclusive curve ruler methods, such as circle, spline, Gaussian and Power, enable you to analyze:

-Advancing / receding contact angle

-Irregular angle

3. Twelve surface free energy calculating models, providing you more options to estimate surface free energy and its distributions.

Exclusively provided 12 methods for estimating surface free energy, e.g. Equation of State (Neumann et al.), Good-Girifalco, Owen-Wendt-Rabel, Simple Fowkes, Extended Fowkes, WU method 1-2, Schultz method 1-2, Acid-base (Van OSS & Good), Jhu, and Zizman Plot (critical surface tension) method, can be used to measure surface free energy and its distribution (dispersive force, polar force and hydrogen bond value, and Lewis acid-base, etc.) of low / high energy solid surface.

4. 300 kinds of liquids with 800 data values of liquid surface tension and its contributions as reference data or for faster analysis of surface free energy of solid.

5. Unique interfacial tensiometer of liquid-gas / liquid-liquid with Young-Laplace equation fitting method based on Bashford-Adams table and Realdrop^TM, used for oscillating drop tests, surface tension measurement of medium to high viscosity sample, dynamic surface / interface tension measurement of surfactant, and oscillating & expanding drop measurement (corresponding modules are required).

6. Unique curve base line correction technology for measurement of contact angle of lower / upper convex.

Exclusive curve base line based circle-fitting or curve-fitting of unilateral arbitrary curve shapes with easier operation and more accurate result.

7. Rod, thread and tilted plate method based interface tension and contact angle measurement for analysis of contact angle of single fiber. (Need to choose and buy related accessories)

8. Dual-software triggering technology for analysis of complicated dynamic / static contact angle.

Unique dual-software triggering technology of CAST®3.0 can not only be applied to measure static contact angle but also advancing / receding contact angle, roll off angle, time-dependent (standard speed is 25 FPS, and camera with higher speed are optional) contact angle and zero-time contact angle of ultra-water absorption material (e.g. powder, fiber, paper, and artificial periosteum). It is applied more extensively with better measured result.

9. Unique technology of wetting behavior analysis (WBA / wetting envelopes).

A 2D map of wetting envelope can be constructed by using the components of surface free energy and corresponding method (such as OWEN), and a plot produces to show how wettability occurs. It is another way of understanding contact angle, hence degree of wetting, arise from an understanding of the forces existing in the material and between the materials.

Wetting behavior analysis of low-energy solid material

10. More comfortable software user interface

(1) New-generation wizard UI. Our software will implement measuring contact angle, surface free energy automatically at the touch of a finger according to wizard UI. Besides, with our 140-page user manual, you can operate the instrument easily without any professional training.

(2) Unicode based software interface. Its English user interface can easily be changed to other language (such as Simplified-Chinese), and makes it more convenient to operate.

11. Fully automatic analysis of contact angle, adhesive work and surface free energy

(1) Fully automatic. Just press ”Measure”, images capture, contact angle calculation, data storage and real-time display measured value will be done without manual intervention.

(2) Manual modification function. Double-click ”Modify”, you can modify measured values by captured image, and software saves the record of operation traces conveniently to avoid errors of automatic measured value.

(3) Real-time graph. Left / right contact angle, average contact angle, adhesive work, surface free energy used equation of state method can be real-time displayed without extra calculation.

12. Powerful database management for convenient storage, query, and exporting data:

√Access database technology provides you more powerful functions

√ Real-time saving and indexing of measured values

√One-to-one correspondence between measured data and image; corresponding drop image is automatically displayed when the data is selected

√ Historical data query

√ Modification of historical data

√ Importing and backup of historical data

√ Database compression

13. Measured data exportable.

All measured data can be exported into Excel file and image file into BMP file, which can be easily imported into scientific article and testing report.

14. Standardized windows technology based video capture technology with better compatibility.

The standardized design of video capture method with the windows multimedia technology enables compatibility of various contact angle meters around the world. Just enjoy the convenience brought by CAST®3.0.

15. Unique video recording function. Measurement process can be recorded into AVI format for later use.