The paper presented the findings obtained by industrial research and experimental development on the use of rare earth metals (REMs) in the production of heavy steel ingots and their impact on the internal quality of the 42CrMo4 grade steel forging. REMs alloying was carried out after vacuuming the steel. A relatively large melting loss of cerium (about 50%) and its further decrease in casting due to reoxidation were observed. Refinement of structure and better mechanical properties of forged bar containing about 0.02 wt.% of Ce compared to that of the standard production were not achieved. The wind power shaft with content of about 0.06 wt.% of Ce showed high amount of REM inclusions, which were locally chained, and in some cases, initiated cracks. Four stoichiometrically different types of REM inclusions were detected in forgings, namely (La-Ce)₂O₂S + (La-Ce)O₂ + SiO₂ (minority); oxygen, phosphorus, arsenic, and antimony bound to lanthanum and cerium probably bonded with iron oxides La + Ce, MgO, Al₂O₃ a SiO₂; (La-Ce)₂O₂S, FeO, SiO₂, and CaO or CaS.

PartnerTech provides printed circuit board (PCB) assembly on request. Wired elements are assembled in through-hole technology and soldered on the wave soldering machine. The PCB with inserted elements is passed across the pumped wave of melted solder. Typically this process is accompanied by some class of defects like cracks, cavities, wrong solder thickness and poor conductor. In PartnerTech Ltd. another type of defects was observed: dispersion of small droplets of solder around holes. Quality assurance department plans to optimize the process in order to reduce the number of defects. In the first stage, it was necessary to develop a methodology for counting defects. This paper presents experimental design and analysis related to this project.

Phenolic acids are an important group of plant secondary metabolites with various, valuable therapeutic properties. Apart from plants growing in the open air, tissue cultures can be an alternative source of the secondary metabolites. The yield of their accumulation in in vitro cultures can be increased by different methods, including culture medium supplementation with precursors, elicitors and changing the standard amounts of the medium components. The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of the precursor (L-phenylalanine), the elicitor (methyl jasmonate) and a higher sucrose concentration on the phenolic acids accumulation in the agitated shoot cultures of Exacum affine Balf. f. ex Regel (Gentianaceae). Qualitative and quantitative analyses of the phenolic acids in methanolic extracts from the biomass were conducted by applying the HPLC method. Fourteen phenolic acids and cinnamic acid were found in all samples. The total content of free phenolic acids increased from approximately 0.242% to 0.635% (2.6-fold) and the total content of the whole phenolic acids (free and bound) - from 0.712% to 1.160% (1.6-fold). The studies show that the best variant for the accumulation of most of the identified phenolic acids contained 6% of sucrose (double the standard amount), L-phenylalanine 1.6 gL(-1) of medium and methyl jasmonate 100 μM. The analysis of the results in the experiment presented here showed that it is possible to increase the accumulation of the phenolic acids in Exacum affine shoot cultures - by adding the precursor (L-phenylalanine), the elicitor (methyl jasmonate) and by increasing the sucrose concentration.