MAPLE GROVE, MN- Carl Zeiss celebrated the grand opening of its North American Computed Tomography Technology Center located in Brighton, MI.

During the two-day event, held December 6 and 7, 2007, visitors had the opportunity to learn about the advantages and benefits of computed tomography and experience the technology first-hand during live demonstrations. Applications engineers and Carl Zeiss representatives were on hand to discuss applications specific issues and explain how this technology can help improve part quality.

Carl Zeiss invested in this facility to offer companies all the benefits of CT scanning but without the need for capital investment. The facility features the new Zeiss Metrotom, a 225kV metrotomography system for industrial applications (R&D, production and quality) and the Varian BIR 450kV CT system.

Industrial CT, a technology that not only detects but quantifies certain defects, is a nondestructive testing (NDT) tool in addition to traditional real-time inspection. It nondestructively measures internal features, making it an ideal complement to CMMs and noncontact optical scanners that cannot readily capture data from internal cavities, undercuts or deep recessed portions of certain parts.

Automotive, aerospace, and other manufacturers have adopted industrial computed tomography as a measurement technology for quality control, process control, first article inspection, design verification, rapid prototyping and rapid manufacturing. The research arms of these organizations have been using it even longer for materials evaluation, process development and benchmarking.