Multimedia Interactive CD & Publications

Over 1,000 Training CD Sold in the Last Five years

We are constantly told that we should sell our CD at what we consider to be silly prices, you see other CD training courses may cost £1500 plus!

We are a small company with small overheads trying to give a good service at a good price, do not under estimate our products, as you can see by our sales many people have not.

Protrain CD courses take the place of text books but have the added advantage that they are updated once or twice a year.  Added to that Steve Chapman uses the CD courses during his lectures as he travels around the world carrying out consultancy and training.  The constant use of the courses and appropriate adjustment means that they are always up to date and constantly improving.

The electronic book is a computer program within which the author may combine all of the presentation areas that modern computing provides. Pictures, diagrams, animation, sound and text are all brought together within a single e-book unit.

The e-book format allows the user to read the book page by page or jump to pertinent items. The user may find additional data  by linking to another relevant page absorbing the information and then returning to the original page.

The conventional computer facilities are of course made available to the student for example a print out of a page or pages, 

To have a look at a couple of typical pages click here

TEXT BOOKS from Protrain

Working With A Scanning Electron Microscope - by Steve Chapman et al

The original test from which our CD have been developed.

A low cost (probably the lowest cost book on the subject) but full of information for the beginner.

Cost £15 including shipping,     US$30, €22

Monitoring & Maintaining the Transmission Electron Microscope by Steve Chapman

A Royal Microscopical Society Publication part of their Microscopy Handbook series.

A guide for those with some maintenance responsibility from which our Maintenance courses and CD have developed.

Cost £12 including shipping,     US$24, €17

CD courses for Windows

95, 98, NT, ME, 2000, XP, Vista & Windows 7 on CD-ROM

Using Internet Explorer

M10   Working With a High Resolution FEG SEM

Totally NEW presentation developed from our FEG SEM Masterclass

Available soon it contains information developing the viewer through to the very latest FEG SEM facilities

M6   Monitoring & Maintaining the Electron Microscope

Click here to see the CD Contents

Cost including postage £150*, US$237, €198

Not just a maintenance course but a course that has been designed to lead an operator through all that is required to fully understand an SEM, a TEM and an EDS system. The CD covers the way the units of the SEM and TEM columns work, gun, lenses and deflection coils, as well as the structure of the EDS detector. Then it moves on to discuss the components of the vacuum system how they work and how they relate to each other when in operation. A short section covers the components and the structure of the electrics and electronics. The course then moves on to two chapters where the alignment of the microscopes is outlined in detail. The following chapter covers the basic maintenance of the instruments, removing parts from the microscopes, cleaning and general maintenance procedures appropriate for the gun, column liners, scintillators, screens, filament alignment and flaming apertures. amongst other points. The course then moves on to discuss the monitoring of performance in SEM, TEM and EDS systems, resolution, and the calibration of magnification, drift rate and contamination rate. The chapter including general advice on high resolution operation of the microscopes and the desired settings for performance. The next chapters deal with analysing instrument performance, problems that arise with the instruments with a view to understanding the problem and finding a fix. There follows a chapter on fine tuning the  instrument set up. The final chapter deals with typical problems found in SEM, TEM and EDS systems and routes to their solutions, here we include emergency procedures for window failure on an EDS system as well as solutions to many of the day to day instrument hiccups.

M1 - Over 55 slides - A basic introduction for ALL operators. We aim to give the minimum theory necessary to understand the microscope, making the operating procedures more understandable. This course covers - the CRT, magnification, image formation, spot size limitation, the electron gun, lenses, deflection coils, the condenser system, focus and astigmatism, aberrations, saturation methods, spot size control, working distance, aperture alignment, image recording, operating procedures, guide lines to operation covering kV, spot size, magnification, and working distance.

M2 - Over 50 slides - Understand the way the electron beam reacts with the specimen and a better interpretation of results becomes a real possibility. This course covers - beam-specimen reactions, reaction paths, reaction volumes, Monte Carlo simulations, Everhart-Thornley detector, BSE detectors, image contrasts, image formation, specimen charge, the object of specimen supports, specimen mounts, fixing specimens in place, high angle mounts, cross sections, reasons and materials for coating, sputter coating, sputter coating problems, evaporative metal coating, carbon coating.

M3 - Over 85 slides - SEM has a fast moving history, this course demonstrates the features that scientists are using when they push the SEM to its limit. The course covers - beam-specimen reactions in relation to the imaged signal, the five reactions that give SE, the three reactions that give BSE, demonstration micrographs, low kV signals, improving performance, the three sources - their specifications, improving the standard tungsten hairpin performance, LaB6, field emission, spot size selection, kV, WD and resolution, external field influence, monitoring optimum signal levels, detector geometry - normal, in lens, double detector in lens, double detector out of lens, and high resolution performance.

M4 - Over 60 slides - Aimed at those using the SEM with x-ray energy analysis (EDS) we try to take the witchcraft out of the procedure. The course covers - electron scatter, characteristic and background x-ray production, the Si(Li) detector, SDD detectors, x-ray windows, the processing system and dead time, artifact peaks, the presentation and shape of KLM lines, optimising the specimen to detector geometry, calibration, working with a spectrum, using KLM markers, qualitative and quantitative analysis and the critical parameters, standards, no standards and quantitative data requirements, element mapping procedures.

Over 60 slides - A basic introduction for ALL operators. We aim to give the minimum theory necessary to understand the microscope, making the operating procedures more understandable. This course covers - transmitted images, lens problems and resolution, electron-specimen reactions, the electron gun, the electron column, magnification and demagnification, deflection coils, the condenser system, beam coherence, condenser focus, illumination astigmatism, image formation, focus, objective astigmatism, electron diffraction, aberrations, rotary pumps, diffusion pumps, turbo pumps, ion pumps, vacuum gauges, the TEM vacuum system, instrument alignment, filament saturation, gun alignment, illuminating system alignment, condenser aperture alignment, eucentricity, image centre, objective aperture alignment, voltage and current alignment, photographic calibration, the photographic procedure, developing technique, an operating procedure. for biological scientists and material scientists including dark field imaging

Each of the courses M1 to M5 are about 45 to 80 minutes long. A slide is presented which has about 30 to 80 seconds of sound, then the student has the option of moving forward to the next slide or running the slide again, the third option is to spend more time looking at the slide. M1 is a basic introduction to SEM which when combined with M2 covers all the aspects of SEM that we would discuss with students during one of our two day “Introduction to SEM”; on site practical courses. Add on M3 and you have the in a very basic form the structure of our one week “Intensive SEM” course. We should point out that the courses will run within Internet Explorer on Windows 3.xx, 95, 98, NT, ME, 2000,  XP, Vista and Windows 7.  M6, the maintenance course, will take the average viewer about two to two and a half hours to complete

Updated 13/07/2010