Well today I ventured out on the longest journey that I've been on for 12 months of Covid incarceration. I went to Manor Royal near Gatwick to see Arun Technology at the invitation of their Finance Manager as previously mentioned.
A nice office / light Industrial Unit on the Brunel estate, all very neat and tidy with just four people working there ! It seems that they have moved on to marketing an analyser machine covering all major metals using UV diffraction. They had designed it, the majority of customers were in China, and the biggest customer has bought them, so they are now Chinese owned.
None of them had seen an Analoy 1401 'in the flesh' - only pictures of the outside. I was able to log on to Madmodder from their offices and show them what their predecessors had made including the whole thing dismantled.
They found it rather strange that an outsider was able to look inside their newest machine and postulate (correctly!) how it worked. Incidentally it's huge, over 100 kg, and not at all portable like my version.
Sadly they had absolutely nothing in their pile of old bits that pertained to my machine. I was hoping but not expecting, that they would have a spare umbilical cord, but no nothing of the sort so I'll have to fabricate one.
So was it a waste of time visiting - no not at all - they were very nice welcoming people, and their current product was very interesting to explore, and I was able to properly thank them for digging through their archives as finding the Service Manual which will in the future I'm sure be very useful.