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The Crucial Roles of Vibration Damping and Isolation in Precision Scientific Applications

Vibration damping and isolation are two critical components that ensure precision and accuracy in various scientific applications such as confocal microscopy, interferometry, IVF, and patch clamping. Jake Porrazzo, a vibration consultant at TMC, enlightens us about the distinguishing factors and significance of these two components using TMC’s CleanBench laboratory table. Damping is a property that describes…

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Vibration damping and isolation are two critical components that ensure precision and accuracy in various scientific applications such as confocal microscopy, interferometry, IVF, and patch clamping. Jake Porrazzo, a vibration consultant at TMC, enlightens us about the distinguishing factors and significance of these two components using TMC’s CleanBench laboratory table.

Damping is a property that describes how swiftly a surface vibration diminishes post an impact. To demonstrate this, Jake compared an undamped piece of steel with a TMC CleanBench laboratory tabletop which employs proprietary damping technology. The stark contrast in damping performance underlines the importance of this feature in reducing the potential for disruptive oscillations.

Isolation, on the other hand, pertains to the protection an experiment or application gets from environmental vibrations or energy transfer from the floor. The TMC CleanBench table incorporates gimbal piston pneumatic isolators that significantly reduce energy transfer. Jake demonstrated this by creating vibrations through a kick to the table, highlighting the limited energy transfer due to the isolation properties of the TMC table.

Comparing the isolated table to a completely rigid one (without isolation), it becomes obvious how environmental vibrations can dramatically impact an experiment. Hence, the demonstration underscores the role of isolation in safeguarding precise applications from environmental disturbances.

The clarification provided by Jake helps to better understand the role of vibration damping and isolation in precision applications. It underscores the need to consider these factors when choosing equipment for sensitive experiments or applications.

Video TranscriptExpand ↓

Hi, everyone. My name is Jake Porrazzo and I'm a vibration consultant at TMC. Right now I'm standing next to one of our flagship products for confocal microscopy, interferometry. IVF and patch clamping. It's called the TMC CleanBench laboratory table. One of the most common questions we get asked is, what is the difference between damping and isolation? So what I'm going to do today is go over a couple of differences with you. Damping is characterized by how quickly a surface vibration dissipates after impact. So what I'm going to do right now is demonstrate the difference between an undamped top and a damped top. You can see right here. I'm standing next to an undamped piece of steel versus the TMC CleanBench laboratory tabletop with proprietary damping technology. Now that we've covered damping, I want to talk a little bit about isolation. So what you can see in front of you is one of the TMC CleanBench laboratory tables and I have it floated right now on our gimbal piston pneumatic isolators. So what we're going to try and mimic is the environmental vibration that can affect your experiment. Something like someone walking around in the same lab room, plane, train, or automobile outside, or a noisy mechanical unit on the same floor using this accelerometer app on the iPad in front of you, we're going to try and demonstrate how our gimbal piston isolators protect the experiment from any energy transfer from the floor or any environmental vibration. So as I kick the table, you'll notice there is very little energy transfered from the floor or from the vibration I'm introducing to the system. Now, when you look at the accelerometer, you'll notice the energy transfer between the floor and the table top where you're running your experiment. This is a completely rigid tabletop, the same CleanBench that we're using before, just with no air in it, no isolation. And as I kick it. You can see how the vibration would affect your experiment. Thank you, everyone, for watching. I hope this answers some of your questions about isolation versus damping.

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