Ultrasonic technology has been used for testing ERW welded pipe at various points in the manufacturing process for many years. 

Friction stir weld (FSW) inspections in aerospace manufacturing are challenging for ultrasound technicians not necessarily because they require specialized computations or complex techniques but because scanning with conventional probe setups can be so time consuming.

As nondestructive examination (NDE) continues to evolve as an inspection discipline, so the technologies of NDE evolve to meet new challenges in terms of materials and material geometries to be inspected. 

Portable phased array ultrasonic testing systems hit the market nearly 20 years ago, and today the latest generation of these tools delivers better amplitude resolution, faster data acquisition rates, and advanced data analysis in a single easy-to-handle package.

Olympus announced the addition of a motorized steerable scanner to its line of solutions for ultrasonic and phased array testing. The field-tested, remote-controlled SteerROVER™ scanner is the most ad-vanced and versatile motorized scanner offered by Olympus.

A question-and-answer period will follow the webinar. A recorded version will be available for later viewing.

On April 20, three days after a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737-700 experienced an engine failure due to a fractured fan blade, resulting in the death of a passenger, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration issued an emergency airworthiness directive that requires operators of CFM56-7B engines with more than 30,000 flight cycles to perform a one-time ultrasonic inspection of all 24 fan blades to detect cracking.

Industrial radiography (RT) is a time-tested technique for examining a welded joint and the heat-affected zone after manufacturing.

The same leaps in technology that have taken us from Pac-Man to today’s virtual-reality gaming are having a big impact on nondestructive inspection.