X-Ray & CT Scanning Archives - Page 3 of 6 - Industrial Inspection & Consulting

What is Industrial X-Ray Imaging?

Industrial X-ray services are the unsung heroes of modern manufacturing, providing invaluable insights into the inner workings of complex components and materials. From aerospace to automotive industries, these services utilize X-ray technology to peer beneath the surface, uncovering defects, assessing structural integrity, and ensuring product quality with unparalleled precision.

THE HARDWARE

At the heart of industrial X-ray services lies advanced imaging technology that enables the creation of detailed, high-resolution images of objects’ internal structures. This non-destructive testing method allows manufacturers to scrutinize components without compromising their integrity, saving time and resources while maintaining product reliability.

1. X-Ray Source, 2. Part Manipulator, 3. X-Ray Detector

Whether it’s inspecting welds for cracks, detecting voids in castings, or analyzing composite materials for delamination, industrial X-ray services offer a versatile solution for a wide range of applications. With customizable inspection protocols and state-of-the-art equipment, these services can adapt to the unique needs of various industries, providing tailored solutions for quality assurance and defect analysis.

Moreover, industrial X-ray services play a crucial role in ensuring regulatory compliance, particularly in safety-critical industries where the integrity of components is paramount. By leveraging X-ray technology, manufacturers can uphold the highest standards of quality and safety, mitigating risks and enhancing customer trust.

In conclusion, industrial X-ray services represent a cornerstone of modern manufacturing, offering a glimpse into the hidden world of materials and components. With their ability to uncover defects, assess structural integrity, and ensure compliance, these services empower manufacturers to deliver products of uncompromising quality, driving innovation and excellence across industries.

CT Scanning Coronary Stents for Weld Evaluation

3um RESOLUTION CT IMAGING OF STENT WELDS

Coronary stents are a specific type of stent used in the treatment of coronary artery disease. These stents are implanted into the coronary arteries, which are the blood vessels that supply oxygen-rich blood to the heart muscle. Coronary artery disease occurs when these arteries become narrowed or blocked due to the buildup of plaque, which is made up of cholesterol, fat, and other substances.

Weld quality directly impacts the safety, efficacy, and longevity of coronary stents. Ensuring high-quality welds is essential for the successful treatment of coronary artery disease and the overall well-being of patients undergoing stent implantation.

Coronary stents often have welds as part of their construction. These welds serve several important purposes:

Joining Components: Stents are typically made from thin metal tubes or wire mesh. Welding is used to join these components together to form the desired stent structure. The welds ensure that the stent maintains its shape and structural integrity during deployment and once it’s in place within the artery.

Sealing Edges: Welding can be used to seal the edges of the metal components, preventing them from unraveling or causing damage to the artery walls during insertion or deployment. This sealing helps to ensure the safety and effectiveness of the stent.

Reducing Material Weakness: Welding is often employed at points where different parts of the stent meet. These junctions can be weak spots if not properly reinforced, and welding helps to strengthen these areas, reducing the risk of failure or breakage.

Smooth Surface: Welding can be used to create smooth transitions between different sections of the stent, which can help to minimize irritation to the artery walls and reduce the risk of complications such as clot formation or restenosis (re-narrowing of the artery).

POROSITY IN STENT WELDS

Porosity in stent welds refers to the presence of small voids or air pockets within the welded region of the stent. This porosity can occur due to various factors during the welding process and can have significant implications for the quality and performance of the stent. Here are some key points regarding porosity in stent welds:

Reduced Mechanical Strength: Porosity weakens the welds, making them more prone to cracking, fracturing, or deformation under mechanical stress. This compromises the structural integrity of the stent and can lead to premature failure or breakage during deployment or while in place within the artery.

Increased Risk of Corrosion: Porous welds create pathways for corrosive agents, such as bodily fluids or environmental factors, to penetrate the stent material. This can accelerate corrosion processes, leading to degradation of the stent over time. Corrosion weakens the material and can result in structural failure, particularly in environments with high levels of oxidative stress.

Poor Biocompatibility: Porous welds may have rough or irregular surfaces, which can increase the risk of tissue irritation, inflammation, or thrombosis (blood clot formation) when the stent is implanted in the body. The presence of voids or air pockets within the welds can also serve as sites for bacterial adhesion, raising the risk of infection at the implantation site.

Compromised Drug Delivery (for Drug-Eluting Stents): In drug-eluting stents, where medications are coated onto the stent surface to prevent restenosis, porosity in the welds can affect the uniformity and integrity of the drug coating. This may result in uneven drug release or premature degradation of the drug layer, reducing the efficacy of the stent in preventing re-narrowing of the artery.

Difficulty in Inspection and Quality Control: Porosity in welds can be challenging to detect visually or with conventional inspection methods. This makes it difficult to ensure the quality and reliability of the stents during manufacturing. Advanced non-destructive testing techniques, such as X-ray and CT Scanning, may be required to identify and quantify porosity accurately.

CT Scanning PCB Components

X-Ray & CT Scanning PCB Components

Industrial X-Ray & CT scanning is used to non-destructively evaluate printed circuit boards.

2D X-RAY

2D x-ray allows our certified technicians to quickly inspect features like bond wire straightness, pin perpendiculariy, BGA porosity, trace defects, and capacitor cracks. Our high resolution systems are fully programmable allowing automated image acquisition including translations, rotations, and magnification changes.

3D CT SCANNING

3D CT scanning offers an additional viewing axis for inspection. With 2D X-Ray all geometry in the view is viewed simultaneously. With 3D CT we can navigate through a tangible inspection volume where a larger variety of digital tools are available. For example, precise component alignments can be created. Additionally, dimensions can be extracted like depth of discontinuities, volumetric porosity, wall thickness, and complex 3D GD&T like flatness or feature positions.

X-RAY IMAGING

CT IMAGING

VOLUMETRIC POROSITY & DATA EVALUATION

Porosity can be extracted, volumetrically quantified, and exported into Excel. Such values as total porosity percentage, individual pore volume, equivalent diameter, and XYZ positional data can be produced.

VIEWING FILTERS

Various viewing filters can be applied to the CT slice data. Instead of looking through a single slice of geometry, we can look at the highest density features across a specified length. For example, the bond wires below are imaged using a maximum density filter across a 2mm zone. If data is particularly noisy, an average min/max filter can be applied to help the inspector understand the geometry.

CT Scanning Tube Welds for Lack of Penetration

IMAGING STEEL TUBES FOR WELD FLAWS

Inspecting tube welds in aerospace, defense, and nuclear applications is not just important; it’s absolutely essential for ensuring safety, preventing environmental contamination, maintaining operational efficiency, complying with regulations, mitigating risks, assuring quality, and ensuring long-term performance.

Tube welds are critical components in various systems such as piping, reactors, and steam generators. Any flaws or defects in welds could compromise the structural integrity of these systems, leading to catastrophic consequences.

Industrial CT scanning is used to evaluate welding processes by offering higher certainty, variable data compared to 2D X-ray or micro-sectioning.

CT Scanning Glass Components for Wall Thickness Evaluation

INDUSTRIAL CT SCANNING GLASS COMPONENTS

WALL THICKNESS EVALUATION

Industrial CT Scan of Suture Needle

MEASURING NEEDLES USING MICRO-CT SCANNING

Industrial’s micro-CT scanning systems are able to resolve down to 3um resolution for the inspection of the smallest manufactured products like needles, fine drill bits, micro-springs, and gears.

The below imaging demonstrates a suture needle. It’s geometry and surface topography can be measured or visually reviewed for defects.

Digital X-Ray or CT for Fuel Injector Sort?

X-Ray or CT for sorting?

Every sort we receive starts with the same question – is digital radiography or CT scanning the optimal method for this project? This sort focuses on a batch of fuel injectors with pinched wires.

Radiography can be a very fast (less expensive) inspection method with a single frame shot taking just 88 milliseconds. However, if the geometry is complex, sometimes it is not possible to characterize defects in a 2D view.

CT scanning can be a longer process (more expensive – 360 degrees of x-ray shots + data processing) but offers a 3D perspective. This perspective allows a tangible characterization to the inspection method, allowing for higher certainty evaluations.

2D Radiography

Because the two wires are in line with each other it is not possible to rotate the sample without the tangs blocking the areas of interest. Rotating the sample 90 degrees also did not work because the copper winding is behind the wires which reduced penetration. If the part configuration were different radiography could have quickly sorted this batch of parts.

3D CT Scanning

High resolution, high speed CT scanning was the method chosen for sorting this batch of parts. The below views are best effort results from the R&D portion of the project to prove capability. The defective sample was used as a representative quality indicator (RQI – a gauge used to prove the process.) We used this RQI to then adjust parameters for speed to improve run rate and reduce cost. Ultimately, we were able to reduce resolution and batch scan three samples at once in a three minute scan. Parts were serialized, sorted, and returned to the customer with accompanying serialized imaging.

Measuring Flight Control Check Valve Screen Size using Micro CT

Inspection of Fluid System
Micro Check Valves

Miniature fluid control components are used in every industry – from scientific instruments like respirators, to defense systems like missile seekers, and automotive EV battery heaters and coolers.

This case study characterizes two stainless steel, mesh screened micro check valves smaller than a dime. We demonstrate CT slice comparisons of the components as well as our measurement capabilities using PolyWorks.

We are able to measure wall thickness, check for component orientation like the spring, ensure the ball seats properly, and image the screen weld.

If one part is functioning differently than another we can create a color coded heat map showing the differences.

Tangible Measurement of Screen Pore Tolerance

We defined best fit cylinders into the screen gaps to understand the actual diametral width of the screen. We found that the screen, indeed, does not allow any contaminant above 125um diameter through.

High Resolution Digital X-Ray of Power Drill

Industrial X-Ray & CT SCANNING OF POWER DRILL

Industrial X-Ray & CT inspection services allow our clients to inspect the internal geometry of their products. This case study explores a power drill. We’ve worked on a variety of home goods like coffee grinders, chainsaw starters, shaver bladers, and mouthwash caps.

High resolution x-ray and CT also allows technicians to measure internal, inaccessible geometry, evaluate fine details like wire bonds and porosity in solder joints, and characterize leak paths in consumables.

General Digital X-Ray Images of Power Drill

Our digital x-ray systems have variable resolution ranging from 3um to 125um. This allows us to image very small and very large objects. This drill could be imaged at low resolution for general component placement (springs are in position) or at high resolution to detect and calculate porosity in the PCB joints.

Pre-to-Post actuation is useful for understanding the dynamics of a complex assembly. For example, happens when something is powered up? How much clearance is there when a lever is pressed? Fill the blank with your own scenario and consider letting Industrial Inspection quantify it for you.

INDUSTRIAL CT SCAN OF POWER DRILL

2D Digital radiography is great for a general understanding of components. However, 3D CT scanning allows inspectors to produce tangible, complex measurements of devices. For example, we could measure the concentricity the chuck components, the profile of the handle, or the depth wires are placed into a connector.

CT Scanning Printed Titanium Implants for Porosity & Trapped Powder

CHARACTERIZING AM COMPONENTS USING INDUSTRIAL CT SCANNING

Industrial CT Scanning is used to characterize 3D Printed / Additively Manufactured components. A strength of these components is the ability to manufacture complex geometries that more traditional manufacturing methods are incapable of producing. However, because of the part complexity more traditional inspection methods like tactile probes and vision system are inadequate. CT scanning can be used to dimensionally inspect and non-destructively evaluate these components for rejectable flaws (porosity, trapped powder, wall thickness, & profile.)

POROSITY ANALYSIS

Porosity can be volumetrically extracted and analyzed for porosity percentage, distribution, 3D rendered for visual comparisons between process changes, or exported to .stl to be used in other software packages.

TRAPPED POWDER INSPECTION

Industrial CT scanning is used to analyze additively manufactured products for trapped powder. If trapped powder is not completely removed from products, its release during product service lifetime could cause serious problems. For medical implants with materials that are supposedly biocompatible, metallic powder can cause inflammation and prevent normal blood vessel formation. [Source] The image below shows an area of interest that should be open to the surface but closed during manufacturing. The trapped powder is seen as a slightly lighter shade of gray compared to the neighboring geometry.

Category: X-Ray & CT Scanning