Industry News: GE Offers Three Inspection Modalities

BILLERICA, MA-With the incorporation of its X-ray applications laboratory from Cincinnati into its Lewistown, PA, facility, GE Inspection Technologies now offers three modalities of nondestructive testing at one in-house location. GE invested more that $350,000 in 2006 in its Lewistown laboratory.

Newly installed in Lewistown is a large vault which contains a 450 kilovolt (kV) Isovolt Titan, a 225kV Titan, a 160kV microfocus tube and two 9-inch tri-field image intensifiers, one with an 8-bit CCD camera and one with a 12-bit CCD camera. Other X-ray equipment includes an X-Cube compact with a 160kV Titan, a 320kV Titan and a number of workstations using Rhythm data review, management and archiving software, with digital X-ray panels, computed radiography plates, and scanners and film digitizers.

This X-ray equipment complements the comprehensive portfolio of existing ultrasonic and eddy current equipment and systems at the laboratory which includes ultrasonic flaw detectors, thickness gages and corrosion monitoring systems, as well as eddy current flaw detectors, crack detectors and conductivity meters.

Dane Hackenberger, global application center leader at GE, says, “Having X-ray, ultrasound and eddy current technologies in one laboratory allows us to investigate customers’ inspection problems more thoroughly and come up with truly optimum solutions, applying the modality best suited to each specific task. Our in-house technologies are used by a team of highly skilled engineers, technicians and specialists, with more than 500 man-years of experience between them. I am convinced that we can continue to improve our reputation as practical problem solvers, applying existing techniques in new ways to solve real problems."

GE applications labs are located throughout the world, providing knowledge and experience across many industry segments to help customers solve their inspection problems. Typical applications include detection of internal flaws and lack of fusion in welds, location of surface bearing cracks in bearings and aircraft wheels and inspection of metal turbine blades.

The Lewistown applications lab has expertise in developing custom-built ultrasonic and eddy current probes and fixtures and in investigating problems that could cause risk to customers’ plant or personnel.