For sale: Stable Micro Systems TA-XT plus Texture Analyser
A complete TA-XT plus that powers on, from 2008. The instrument that decides whether your biscuit snaps and your gel holds. Here is what it is.
There is an instrument that decides whether a biscuit snaps or crumbles, whether a gel holds its shape, and whether a tablet dissolves the way it is supposed to. It is called a texture analyser, and almost nobody outside food science and pharma has heard of it.
We have one. It powers on, it is complete, and it is for sale.
What it actually does
A texture analyser is a very precise machine for pushing on something and recording exactly how hard it pushed and how far it moved.
That sounds trivial. It is not, because the entire useful range is small and the precision required is high. You are measuring the force needed to snap a wafer, or to push a probe two millimetres into a gel, and you are measuring it as a curve over time rather than as a single number. The shape of that curve is the texture.
A TA-XT plus can pull as well as push, which is how you measure the stickiness of a dough or the peel strength of a seal.
Who buys one
Food manufacturers, mostly. Texture is a spec. If your product is supposed to have a specific crunch, snap, chew, or spreadability, this is the instrument that tells you whether the batch you just made matches the batch the customer approved. It is quality control for mouthfeel, and it is taken extremely seriously by anyone selling food at scale.
Pharma, for tablet hardness and disintegration.
Materials and packaging labs, for adhesives, seals, gels, and films.
Universities, in food science and materials departments, which is where this one came from.
The TA-XT is the standard in this space. Stable Micro Systems has an enormous library of probes and fixtures, and published methods that reference this exact instrument, which matters when you need a result that a customer or a regulator will accept.
What we can and cannot tell you
It powers on. It is complete as pictured. It was made in 2008, and the serial number is 11919.
We have not calibrated it, and we cannot. Calibrating a force instrument means verifying it against traceable reference weights, and we do not have a traceable reference. Any lab buying this will want to calibrate it into their own quality system anyway, which is normal for a used instrument and is a thing they know how to do.
So this is sold as a complete, powering, mechanically sound instrument, and not as a calibrated one. The price reflects that.
The economics
A new TA-XT plus is a serious capital purchase. For a university lab, a startup food company, or a contract manufacturer adding a second QC bench, a used one that powers on and can be calibrated locally is a fundamentally different proposition.
If you are that buyer, you already know what this is and you know what it is worth. If you have questions about the fixtures, the probe attachments, or the software, ask and we will get you the detail.