Droplet Lab

08/31/2026

Here's a worked example from our emulsion stability page, not a customer story, that illustrates something worth knowing.

Three emulsifiers measure almost exactly the same on the property most formulators check. In the walkthrough, two produce stable emulsions and one breaks down within a month.

The difference isn't the final number. It's how quickly each surfactant reaches it. The two that work settle in around twelve seconds. The one that fails takes ninety five.

Emulsification happens in the instant new surface is being created, far too fast for a slow acting surfactant to keep up. By the time it arrives, the droplets have already merged.

Measuring that speed takes an afternoon. Waiting for a thirty day stability trial to tell you the same thing takes thirty days.

Questions welcome in the comments.

Full write-up:

Understand emulsion stability mechanisms and prevent droplet coalescence by measuring interfacial tension and phase boundaries.

08/28/2026

Some of our favorite stories are the slow ones. Back in 2020, the University of South Florida's Chemistry department first asked about using the Dropometer in their undergraduate teaching labs. Life happened, budgets shifted, and things went quiet for a few years.

In September 2023, USF Chemistry came back. By Spring 2024, 33 Dropometers were in their teaching labs, and today, more than two years later, they're still running, used by roughly 1,000 students every semester.

Total spend for the deployment was about $30,000, which works out to roughly $30 per student in year one (we're keeping that as a year-one estimate, not an ongoing number). Under the direction of Dr. Jhon J. Figueroa, Assistant Director of Teaching Laboratories, this became one of the largest classroom deployments we've supported.

Are you teaching surface science or materials concepts in an undergrad lab? We'd love to hear how you're doing it. Full case study linked below.

Full write-up:

How the chemistry teaching labs at USF deployed 33 custom goniometers under $1,000 a unit, giving undergraduates hands-on contact angle measurement.

08/19/2026

Here's a number that surprises people: according to ASQ, the average manufacturer loses 15-20% of revenue to what's called Cost of Poor Quality — and most of it isn't the scrap you can see on the floor. It's rework, warranty claims, and quiet order losses.

There's a simple rule behind this: $1 spent catching a problem before it happens is worth about $10 once it reaches assembly rework, and can be worth $100 once it becomes a warranty claim or recall. For adhesive bonding, the cheapest place to catch trouble is the surface itself, before parts ever meet the adhesive.

That's why we built the Dropometer to make a surface check something anyone on the line can run — five spots on a part, under ten minutes, no lab required.

Curious how your team currently checks surfaces before bonding — visual inspection, dyne pens, or nothing at all? We'd love to hear how you're handling this.

Full write-up:

Stop adhesive failures before they happen. Verify surface cleanliness and energy with contact angle testing for dependable bonds.

08/17/2026

Here's a worked example from our cleanliness verification page, not a customer story, just the mechanics.

A fixture contact point reads 71.8 degrees. The rest of that same surface reads about 14 degrees clean. The ATP swab taken from that exact same spot comes back passing, within normal range.

Both tests would be right. They measure different things. ATP looks for biological material, bacteria and organic residue. It has no way to detect a thin film of handling oil, because oil carries no ATP signature to detect. The swab passes because there is genuinely nothing biological there. The oil is still there, left behind from handling before the part reached that point.

This is not an argument for dropping ATP. It is the opposite: a cleanliness program that only checks for biological contamination has a blind spot for anything that is not biological, oils, mold release, plasticizer residue, fingerprints. The two checks catch different failures and work best run together, at the same spots.

If your coating, bonding or sealing defects keep showing up at handling points even though ATP keeps passing, that overlap is worth checking.

Questions welcome in the comments.

Full write-up:

Verify surface cleanliness and hygiene with quick water-contact-angle checks. Confirm cleaning before bonding, coating or packaging.

08/10/2026

We get this question a lot: why does the Dropometer cost $4,990 when Ossila's contact angle goniometer runs about $3,000?

We think it's worth answering honestly, so here's a side-by-side of what each company publishes on their own spec sheets:

Dropometer: $4,990 | 0.35° accuracy | 8-hour battery | 5-year warranty
Ossila: ~$3,000 | 1° accuracy | 30fps camera | 2-year warranty

A couple of things to be upfront about: we haven't run a side-by-side lab test between the two instruments on the same samples, so this is a comparison of published specs, not a head-to-head performance test. And Ossila's frame rate genuinely beats ours, if you need to capture very fast wetting events, that's worth factoring in.

But for labs running repeatable measurements over years, the tighter accuracy and longer warranty are a real part of what that price gap buys.

Questions about which fits your application? Happy to talk it through.

Full write-up:

Dropometer vs Ossila: both do contact angle and pendant surface tension. Dropometer adds dynamic angles, roll-off, surface energy and offline use.

07/16/2026

Today is Prof. Alidad Amirfazli’s free keynote on the Fundamentals of Wetting and Adhesion goes live at 3 PM BST (10 AM EDT / 7:30 PM IST). Still time to register:

🔗 https://my.demio.com/ref/YtwqCLgy6DFXVcmS

07/15/2026

Tomorrow Free keynote: Fundamentals of Wetting and Adhesion with Prof. Alidad Amirfazli (York University). A short Droplet Lab segment follows.

🗓 Thurs, July 16 · 3 PM BST (10 AM EDT / 7:30 PM IST)
🔗 Register free: https://my.demio.com/ref/YtwqCLgy6DFXVcmS

07/09/2026

Meet the speaker: Prof. Alidad Amirfazli (York University), a leading researcher in interfacial science and Droplet Lab’s scientific advisor.

His free keynote on the Fundamentals of Wetting and Adhesion is on July 16: contact angle, surface energy, and why adhesion succeeds or fails.

🗓 Thurs, July 16 · 3 PM BST (10 AM EDT / 7:30 PM IST)
🔗 Register free: https://my.demio.com/ref/YtwqCLgy6DFXVcmS