History
The Centre for Technical Physics (Centrul de Fizică Tehnică, CFT) in Iași worked in the Pavilionul Moldova building in Copou; in 1977 it came under the Committee for Nuclear Energy, and in 1990, renamed the Institute of Technical Physics, it became part of IFA [1]. From the 1970s its magnetometry group grew into a school of magnetometry, making magnetic field sensors, magnetometers, gaussmeters, teslameters and metal detectors in its microproduction workshop [1].
Magnetometry
The centre developed saturable fluxgate sensors (including a patented double-pumping magnetometer), the Multiflux fluxgate – used to detect iron objects in the textile and non-ferrous metal industries and in laboratory magnetometers – fluxgates with soft ferrite toroidal cores for stronger fields, and inductive transducers with a resolution of 10 nT [1]. A gaussmeter for the residual magnetisation of the bearings made at the Brașov bearing works, approved in 1977 and made in the centre’s microproduction until 1989, used ferrite cores and METROSET cases from ICE [1]. Its magnetometers included an analogue magnetometer for weak fields (50 nT, approved in 1978), the DFM100 and DFM001 digital magnetometers, the DHL 2 Hall-probe teslameter, magnetometers for alternating fields, the SG-R7 triaxial magnetometer for the Czech MAGION subsatellites, and the transducer of IFA’s MPFZA-3 magnetometer [1].
A triaxial magnetometer, with three fluxgates on the mast and the electronics in an aluminium box, measured the magnetic field of minesweepers so that they could be demagnetised and not attract mines; it was fitted to all four degaussing ships of the river fleet (Automatica, Energetica, Magnetica and Electronica), and magnetometers with 8 to 24 channels measured the magnetic signature of military vehicles [1]. Chapter II of the same book says the Iași centre equipped warships with systems against sea mines [2]. The centre also made metal detectors – first for protecting the coal mills of the Galați steelworks’ coking plant, then dozens of eddy-current detectors for metallurgy, woodworking, pulp and paper, rubber and plastics, building materials, non-woven textiles and mining (in 1994 even for a biscuit line in Constanța) – and, in 1995, the DBP-01 letter-bomb detector [1]. Other equipment included an instrument for measuring the stretching of fabric in textile finishing and an electronic level with a ferrofluid sensor for hydrology and dams [1].
When the centre gave up microproduction in 1989, the manufacture of its magnetometers and metal detectors passed to Terraflux Control, the private company of the author of the Multiflux patent [1].