Electronic leak testing using either air or a tracer gas has made significant advances in the last decade with the addition of new techniques, improved sensitivity and faster test cycles. The motivations for these changes are regulatory requirement (environmental, safety) and pressure on cost. Leak testing in many cases is a risk vs. probability vs. cost decision, and in many cases there is more than one technology that is available for your application, but not all are optimal to the application requirements. This article focuses mainly on leak testing with air especially on micro flow technology and helium leak detection with mass spectrometry, and how to select the best method for your leak detection challenge.
We will highlight some of the considerations and the decision making process to assure that your leak testing process selection is optimized (performance and cost) to your product and organization requirements.