Malvern Instruments Spraytec, User Manual

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Creating an SOP
Creating an SOP to make the measurement is the main step in the process. This
means using the
SOP wizard as described here. This wizard consists of several
dialogues that can be stepped through by using Next and Back buttons.
On each SOP dialogue there is a Help button; this gives more information than
this manual on the individual parameters in the dialogue.
There are two ways to complete an SOP:
.
Create a new SOP from scratch.
.
Use the manual measurement facility to test and optimise settings, then
save the resulting settings as an SOP. This is described in the section after
this one.
'
N o t e
.
After creating the first SOPs in this way, try creating a new SOP by
editing an existing one. This is described at the end of this section.
As examples, this section shows how to set up SOPs for continuous sprays, pulsed
sprays and externally-triggered sprays.
Templates
There are three templates initially, selected from the wizard’s welcome page.
When one of these is selected, suitable defaults for that measurement type are
supplied throughout the remaining dialogues. The templates are:
.
Default continuous.
.
Default nasal spray.
.
Default rapid.
Templates are stored as . ssop files in the folder SOP Templates . Users can add
their own templates to this folder; these will then appear in the selection list.
Three measurement types are available, selected from the second dialogue shown:
.
Continuous – this is used for the continual sampling of a spray. The mea-
surement will continue, adding new results to the Particle Size History, un-
til the
Stop button is pressed. How often spray is measured and the Particle
Size History updated is controlled by the setting of the sampling rate. The
minimum sampling rate is every second (1s), the maximum sampling rate
is once every 30 seconds (30s).
C H A P T E R 5
S p r a y t e c
P a g e 5 . 5