History

Isomass Scientific Inc. was founded in 1981 by Nik Binder with the assistance of his wife Joanne.  While working at the University of Saskatoon Nik ran AEI MS-9 and Varian GD150 mass spectrometers.  At the University he developed a penchant for repairing his instruments and soon other GD150 users were asking for his help to keep their instruments running.   Once the University bought a VG602 Nik expanded his service skills to include that instrument.  Isomass was born as a company to provide service to VG and their users.

VG Canada soon snapped Nik up to service their stable isotope mass spectrometers in Canada.  Isomass’ product line quickly expanded to offer 3rd party spares for the VG instruments and other mass spectrometers as well as consumables for the Carlo Erba elemental analyzers.

In the early 1990s VG Canada invited Nik to take on the sales of their inorganic mass spectrometers and to move to Calgary.  Seeing that this move would leave a hole in VG’s service capability, Nik suggested that Peter Stow move from VG Isogas in England to join VG Canada.

In 1994 Isomass made a significant change in its direction.  With  the issues VG (by then owned by Fisons) were having with instrument quality and delivery, Nik decided to break away from the VG world.  Thermo (née Finnigan) offered the Canadian distributorship to Isomass for their Bremen inorganic products.  To install and service the Finnigan instruments Isomass hired Peter, who had been working for VG for 14 years.

Since then Isomass has grown to a full time staff of 12 including 5 service engineers based across Canada.  Isomass offers the following services to Thermo users worldwide:

  • The Isomass Training Centre in Ottawa for Thermo stable isotope products.
  • On-site training for stable isotope products with either general training, sports doping or oil and gas industry specific training.
  • On-site Element application training.
  • Worldwide installation, service and support of  GIRMS, Triton, Neptune, DFS and Element.

The Isomass product portfolio has grown to include all the instruments, equipment and consumables shown elsewhere on this website.

Isomass celebrated 35 years of business in 2016. Please see our anniversary page for a few words and pictures.