Test Equipment and Measurement Instrument Blog

We have just published an ebook called "A Guide To Finding An Accurate and Reliable Moisture Meter" Below is an excerpt from the book which covers the questions you need to ask your team and the supplier to make an informed decision.

Henry Ford is quoted as saying, “Don’t find fault, find a remedy.” Product development, quality assurance and quality control specialists are trained to identify faults, ensuring the product meets both internal and external standards. While a myriad of factors can affect product quality, you would be hard pressed to find one that has as large a role as moisture in creating many of these ‘faults.’ But what is the remedy?  A moisture meter, the right moisture meter!

As you seek to optimize production, there are obvious operational costs where efficiency must be assessed. However, evaluating rising labor, fuel, freight and materials costs is likely to reveal resources that have already been stretched to the max through unrelenting improvements to efficiency. Additionally, the value of purchasing a new instrument, particularly when the models in use are operating properly, may be overlooked by you and your team.

Last week we discussed some of the highlights of our handheld NIR moisture meter, the KJT130. It’s portability makes it a favorite among field specialists and manufacturers who need instant results in the midst of their processing lines. However, for those in a laboratory setting seeking high level quality assurance/quality control measurements we’d like to introduce the KJT230 Advanced Desktop Moisture Analyzer, it’s the high caliber, one touch instrument from our NIR moisture meter family.

R&D, quality control and quality analysis department laboratories are rife with a variety of spectrometers. These test instruments improve the bottom line of manufacturing companies, ensuring products meet standard market parameters with minimal waste. While a variety of instruments utilize infrared spectroscopy, near- infrared (NIR) spectroscopy is specifically useful in analyzing bulk materials, often with no sample preparation.

NIR test equipment has evolved over the past decade to be used in a wide variety of analysis applications. Currently, these spectrometers are employed across nearly all manufacturing lines, measuring everything from pharmaceuticals to food and beverages, and spanning the chemical, beauty, packaging, coating, medical supply and agricultural industries. Just one spectrometer can be used to confirm the state and quality of bulk materials or raw ingredients, assess intermediate products in a processing line and confirm that final goods are ready to meet consumers’ expectations.

Traditionally, samples are brought to the lab, where these high-tech machines stand ready. However, walking a sample from the field, stockroom or factory line is time-consuming, prohibited to a limited size and shape of the sample, and introduces unwanted variables. In response to these limitations, we’ve designed portable spectrometers, like the KJT130 moisture meter, to meet the real needs of QA, QC and R&D specialists.

Here’s why we believe operations or development teams would be hard pressed to find a better investment.

Whether your business is in the food, pharmaceutical, pulp and paper, personal care or chemical industry, your company’s success depends on developing protocols that produce replicable, high quality results.

Discovering new spices and recipes, sampling new foods, and taking home delicious new recipe ideas is all part of the enjoyment of IFT - we should know, we've been doing this for over 15 years.

Innovation is the name of the game at Kett. While we’re ever conscious of the challenge to keep our designs current and top-of-the line, we’ve also been making an effort to keep our company on the edge of today’s market. Thus, we’ve officially joined the social media revolution, starting a Twitter account and a Facebook Page to meet our customers wherever they may be.

Today, farmers, food manufacturers, quality assurance and R&D specialists are all on social media to disseminate information faster than ever before. With this year’s rice harvest coming up, we’ve been following the Twitter hashtags #rice, #crop2013, #ag and #agriculture to monitor real time updates from the USDA, the Institute of Rice Research Institute, the California Rice Commission, and a host of other agricultural information centers around the globe. Keeping up with what interests our customers helps us understand how our products can meet their needs, while following trends informs us about what we need to be designing next.

In this week’s hashtag hunt we learned the Food and Agriculture Resource Center of the United Nations (#UNFAO) issued their April 2013 Rice Market Monitor Report, announcing a 1 million ton uptick in rice yields and an estimated 1.8% increase in global rice utilization for the next year. We also found a study presented on Radio Australia reporting that 70% of the world’s population is now dependent on rice for food. In the hopes of averting monumental crop losses, governments are now initiating long-awaited research and development funding. In lesser news, we also discovered that the first crop circle of the season has been found in a UK oil seed patch! Oh, sorry, got distracted for a moment there.

Well, you’ve got to have some fun on Twitter, but in all seriousness, with the upcoming public release of our C130 powder whiteness tester and the recent debut of both our PQ520 rice moisture meter and our C600 grain whiteness meter, we’re looking forward to contributing our test equipment to help meet the global rice industry’s growing demands. Monitoring the latest industry news has shown us the importance of ensuring our moisture meters and quality measurement instruments are available to this growing market.

While it’s certainly been an adventure to explore new territory in the realm of social media, it’s the human-to-human interactions that really get us excited about what we do. The relationships we’ve formed over the past 25 years at conferences like PittCon and the Institute of Food Technology (IFT) conference have become the heart of Kett. We’re hoping to merge the two worlds and connect to at least a few of the 20,000 professional attending IFT, as we’ll be introducing ourselves and our products under #IFTExpo for the first time this year.

Having started Kett specifically to serve farmers just like the ones posting their first harvest’s photos on Twitter under #rice, we are thrilled to be merging our technology with that of today’s world of communication.

A wide array of measurement instruments and technologies exist to test the moisture in grains and seeds.  The reason for this variety is that moisture is one of the most important variables to control when growing, harvesting, processing and finally, preparing the grain for consumption. 

The right moisture levels at which to drain or harvest a crop varies from region to region and field to field.