NDT Applications: Laser Adjusts Motion System of Ultrasonic Scanner
Matec Instruments (Northborough, MA) builds ultrasonic inspection robots that look through these parts to locate voids or delaminations. The instrument is based on two identical gantries that resemble the towers on a suspension bridge, each supporting a horizontal beam (a manipulator) that moves in X-Y directions. On the end of one manipulator, the machine carries an ultrasound transducer; on the end of the other is a receiver. Together, they work in a master/slave configuration. With a travel of 40 feet in the X-axis and 18 feet in the Y-axis, the system is an NDT scanner with a large inspection envelope.
The data quality produced by the scanner depends on careful positioning of the ultrasound heads during scanning. Because of their size and machining limitations, the manipulator drives cannot position the ultrasound transducers with the necessary accuracy. The ultrasonic image quality depends on the testing machine's ability to follow itself and the complex contoured geometry it is inspecting. When the system is performing a through-transmission test, each independent five-axis gantry must track the other while sending ultrasound from one side of the component through the thickness to the other side.