Abstract
Round robin tests with 16 cooperating laboratories were designed to gather preliminary information on precision of the x-ray method as affected by several commonplace factors. Of the four factors examined the following contributions to precision were found in terms of standard deviation: Resetting operating conditions of the x-ray tube, 0.5%; repositioning the x-ray spectrometer at the x-ray line peak, 0.5% or less; estimating composition under the most adverse conditions, 10% of amount present (An error of about 2% composition was observed to be rather constant over a wide range of composition); precision of mixing powders to a nominal composition, 7%. In addition, the statistical nature of the x-ray process was checked, and experiment found to be in agreement with theory.
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