Introduction The scale of materials and machined components continues to decrease with advances in technology making traditional test systems increasingly more diffi cult to use for determining mechanical properties. For this reason instrumented indentation testing (IIT) or depth sensing indentation (DSI) testing is becoming the technique of choice for determining mechanical properties of materials on the micro and nano scales. Based off of research by Sneddon, W.C. Oliver and G.M. Pharr published a landmark paper on IIT in 1992, which laid the foundation for much of the ongoing research and development in the fi elds of materials science and engineering. The instrument used for this seminal paper was the fi rst design of what has now become Agilent’s Nano Indenter G200.