Mohs scale of mineral hardness 77 AD. While greatly facilitating the identification of minerals in the field, the Mohs scale does not show how well hard materials perform in an industrial setting. Despite its lack of precision, the Mohs scale is highly relevant for field geologists, who use the scale to roughly identify minerals using scratch kits. The Mohs scale hardness of minerals can be commonly found in reference sheets. Mohs hardness is useful in milling. It allows assessment of which kind of mill will best reduce a given product whose hardness is known. The scale is also in use at digital electronic manufacturers, for
Indentation hardness used to quantify material characteristics at smaller scales. Measuring mechanical properties for materials, for instance, of thin films, can not be done using conventional uniaxial tensile testing. As a result, techniques testing material "hardness" by indenting a material with a very small impression have been developed to determine to estimate these properties. Hardness measurements quantify the resistance of a material to plastic deformation. Indentation hardness tests compose the majority of processes used to determine material hardness, and can be divided into two classes: "microindentation" and "macroindentation" tests. Microindentation tests typically have forces less than . Hardness, however, cannot be considered