Following our quarterly staff update when Ross, our Managing Director, and Helen, our Finance Director, spoke to staff about latest developments in the company, our staff enjoyed a tasty Chinese buffet to celebrate the recent Chinese New Year.
Our Sales Engineer Ashley received a fortune “You will meet someone famous”, which could turn out to be true as his colleague and fellow Engineer Ben received a fortune saying he would be famous.
Last year Linkam launched a new Water Circulation Pump designed specifically for our hot stage microscopy solutions, bringing an improved workflow at temperatures above 300°C on stages such as the THMS600 and the TS high temperature stages. When used with our Peltier stage the system can hold sample temperatures as low as -30°C, depending on the stage.
At Linkam we have a passion for continuous product improvement and are therefore calling on all existing WCP users to complete a short 2 minute survey on Survey Monkey, by clicking on the button below!
THIS SURVEY IS NOW CLOSED. THANK YOU TO ALL CONTRIBUTORS - YOUR VALUABLE FEEDBACK IS APPRECIATED.
This week Linkam’s Australian distributor, Trevor Hinwood, from Hin Sci is exhibiting at the 27th Australian Conference on Microscopy and Microanalysis (ACMM27).
Trevor says “The conference is going well with over 400 registrants and lots of interest in our products. After lockdowns people are keen to meet fellow researchers and industry to see what is new and discuss their requirements.”
Why not stop by if you have any temperature controlled microscopy needs?
Will it be a white Christmas this year?
The picture above shows the view outside our offices a few weeks ago when snow came early to the UK. Hopefully it will return for Christmas.
Whatever the weather, best wishes for a Happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year from all at Linkam.
Champion
After a month of fantastic football, superb skills and at times extreme competitiveness, the final of Salfords 2022 Linkam’s table football competition, was won by Alex, our Specialist Stages Testing Technician. It was great to see so many of our staff take part and watch the games during lunchtime over the past few weeks.
Linkam Founder Arnold Kamp with the old CNC Lathe
Linkam recently bid farewell to its old faithful EMCO CNC Lathe after 20 years of reliable service. Although not as big as some of our CNC machines, this machine was used to turn some of our smaller parts, adding flexibility to our production capacity.
Installation of a new Mazak QTE-200M is now underway to replace the functions of the EMCO CNC. The new lathe offers more power, advanced control features and improved productivity taking Linkam into the future.
The arrival of Linkam’s new CNC Lathe
Linkam staff took the opportunity to show off their festive fashion flare and raise money for charity last week. A grand total of £154.16 was raised for Save the Children which has been matched by Linkam.
Many thanks to all who contributed.
Please note: Linkam will be closed from lunchtime on the 23rd December 2022 and reopen on Tuesday 3rd January 2023.
We were pleased to meet our friends from JHT in Fukuoka, Japan earlier this month. Our MD Ross Browne, and Sales and Marketing Manager Clara Ko, enjoyed meeting colleagues from JHT, our Japanese distributor, to discuss our partnership. We would like to thank our kind hosts Mr Takamasa Iwasaru, Chairman, Mr Koichi Iwasaru, Managing Director, and the JHT team for their warm hospitality over the two days.
Our MD Ross Browne, and Sales and Marketing Manager Clara Ko, were delighted to visit our OEM partner Rigaku in Tokyo last week. It was our first visit to Japan since before the pandemic and it was great to meet our colleagues in person again. Ross and Clara met with Dr Kazuki Ito and Ms Yayoi Taniguchi from the X-ray Instrument Division to discuss our ongoing partnership and would like to thank them for their kind hospitality.
Tasty Treats!
Yesterday staff at Linkam held a Spooktacular bake off competition to celebrate Halloween. The cake didn’t last long and was gratefully tasted by staff who then voted for their favourites. Competition was fierce but in the end Victoria and Hannah emerged as the well deserved joint winners.
Arnold Kamp founded Linkam 40 years ago to the day on Sunday 23rd October, when our company’s first home was his garage in Surrey! This weekend we marked our 40th anniversary in style. Our colleagues from Holland visited our new UK Headquarters in Salfords, Surrey then the whole team celebrated with a night in London, a round of indoor golf, a few drinks and some special donuts! It was great for the team to be together again after two years of the pandemic, and to find out just how competitive some of our team are…. Here’s to the next 40 years!
We were sorry to say goodbye to our Sales and Marketing Director, Duncan Stacey, last week. Duncan was with Linkam for eight years and oversaw a significant increase in our sales and partnerships around the world. Here’s Duncan trying on one of his leaving gifts of a scarf, his trademark attire (!), which we hope will bring back happy memories of his time with us. With him in the picture below is Clara Ko, our new Sales and Marketing Manager, who is looking forward to meeting our friends and partners around the world.
We were pleased to welcome visitors from J.A.Woollam to our new home in Salfords, Surrey last week. Joining us were Jeremy, Andrew and Hannah who had travelled over from Lincoln, Nebraska in the US. Our visitors were given a tour of the site and met with our MD, Ross Browne, Sales and Marketing Director, Duncan Stacey, and Sales and Marketing Manager, Clara Ko, to discuss our ongoing partnership.
After several weeks of unremitting good weather and record-breaking high temperatures, the weather finally changed, and the rain came down – it must be the annual Linkam “Sports Day”! The first one in over three years due to the pandemic.
We started with a Linkam-based quiz and then moved outside to show our skills in several sports including rounders, swing ball and our own ‘international football game’ – New Zealand vs Germany vs Peru vs England – it seems to have been a draw.
While initially dry, the rain soon started to fall but that didn’t deter everyone joining in either as a competitor, spectator or ‘expert sports coach’ from the side-lines! It was great to see so many families and friends joining in the fun.
Thanks to Julie, our HR manager, for organising a great afternoon.
We are excited to be heading off to Portland, Oregon in the United States for Microscopy and Microanalysis (M&M) 2022 at the beginning of August - just a couple of weeks away now!. It will be a great opportunity to meet up with friends old and new after the last few years. It’s hard to believe it’s been three years since the last physical M&M!
We will be focusing on our Cryo workflow solutions but are happy to talk about our wide range of instruments. Come and meet our experts at Booth 1140 to see the latest version of our highly popular CMS196 Cryo Correlative stage and have a first look at our new Cryo Plunger for EM sample preparation.
We will also be showing a number of our sample characterisation tools, including the Modular Force Stage (MFS), ideal for gaining a better understanding of a material’s behaviour under different temperature, mechanical stress and environmental conditions.
We are looking forward to seeing you there!
We wanted to share some images from the first few days in our new offices…
Our Office, R&D and Sales and Marketing teams have moved to our new headquarters at Perrywood Business Park in Surrey. Our Production Team will join us here at the end of the month and are still manufacturing our stages in Tadworth.
After a few days of unpacking and getting everything up and running, most of our crates are now empty and we’re getting used to our new facilities including the canteen and coffee machine!
In order to get everything ready, we have all been showing our wide skill sets putting together and setting up desks and chairs, and members of R&D and Production have helped to build our new Stores area.
We’ll be posting more progress reports in the coming days.
As you may be aware from our previous blog post, we are moving to larger, custom-equipped premises, just a few miles away in Redhill, Surrey to accommodate our expanding business.
Admin, sales and R&D have spent the last few weeks packing and sorting. Last Friday was the final push to get everything packed and ready to be picked up on Monday and shipped to our new premises.
You can see from the photos below that the office space, demonstration area and meeting rooms are now ready and waiting to be occupied.
Once phase one is complete, production, warehouse and stores will move over in phase two, at the end of April
We are all very excited to be moving and looking forward to posting more photos as we all get settled in.
This week will be busy getting everything unpacked and set up so please bear with us.
You can find our new address on our home page. Our phone number and all other contact information remains the same.
Please sign up to our newsletter if you would like to receive further updates.
Our customers work in a wide range of industries and research disciplines, and we are always excited to see published work featuring our instruments. We have more than 35,000 mentions in papers and articles indexed by Google scholar – and that’s not including papers that have not been digitised in the online library. That’s a lot of research!
Temperature and environmental control are critical in fully understanding the characteristics and behaviour of materials under investigation, and researchers and industrial users alike have come to rely on Linkam products to help answer their questions and overcome their challenges.
Our systems are used to characterise materials from polymers to biological tissue, and metals to composites, in sectors including geology, life science and pharmaceuticals, semiconductor / electrical, materials, metallurgy, plastics and polymers, space science, food science, and oil and gas.
Scientists trust Linkam to develop products to enable their research. Many of our standardised sample characterisation systems started out as an idea brought to us by a scientist either dissatisfied with what was available or looking to create something completely new.
Recently published work featuring Linkam products includes:
1. A paper published by the University of Petra, Jordan, which describes for the first time the formation of room temperature therapeutic deep eutectic solvent (THEDES) of RIS, an antipsychotic drug that is used in the treatment of schizophrenia, mixed and manic states associated with bipolar disorder, and irritability in children and adolescents with autism. Our FDCS196 stage was used in this study to develop a novel transdermal delivery system for Risperidone.
2. A team of researchers at Queen’s University Belfast and University College London, (UCL), developed a new strategy for the manufacture of high drug-loaded amorphous solid dispersions (HDASD) using a hot-melt extrusion (HME) based platform. Using a Linkam THMS600 heating and cooling stage with T94 controller and LNP liquid nitrogen cooling system, the study was able to directly observe the temperature dependences of the X-ray scattering pattern for the crystalline drugs (IND, NPX and IBU) in the presence of a polymeric carrier.
3. Researchers from the University of Huddersfield’s Thermal Methods Research Unit (TMRU) combined differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) with thermomicroscopy to shed light on materials’ energy changes and optical features in this recent paper, using our Optical DSC450 System.
4. A study by Swansea University used a Linkam LTS420E-P attached to a novel ultra-sensitive external quantum efficiency system to characterise the photogeneration process of organic solar cells. The study proved it is possible to achieve near-unity charge generation quantum yields in organic solar cells.
Those are just some of the many recent examples where our systems have helped researchers to make important breakthroughs.
Have a look for yourself! You may find papers showing how researchers have used Linkam stages in your own area of research. Or maybe your field is entirely new, and you’ll be the first to use one of our stages in your application.
If you are looking for help controlling the temperature or environment of material you are studying, contact us to find out how we could help with an existing or customised solution.
Dear Partners, Colleagues and Friends,
As always, we extend our best wishes to our partners, customers, and friends around the world. We sincerely hope that you are safe, in good health, and able to continue working where possible.
The majority of COVID restrictions have now been lifted in the UK, however, to safeguard our staff and partners and to ensure there is no interruption in production, we continue to maintain a number of safety protocols to provide a COVID secure workplace to allow our staff to work safely and effectively.
We hope to be able to visit our customers and partners in the UK in the near future, and are cautiously optimistic that we will be able to make more visits and attend conferences further afield as the COVID situation permits. We are looking forward to being able to meet you in person again, to discuss your temperature and environmental control research. In the meantime, our Sales and Support teams remain available by email, phone and video call for enquiries and virtual demonstrations, and we would like to take this opportunity to thank you again for your continued support.
Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any further questions.
Yours sincerely,
Ross Browne, Helen Kenward, Pete Grocutt, Duncan Stacey
Linkam Management Team