Hardness testing is an important part of quality and many factors need to be considered for this type of test, as seemingly small factors-thickness, size, location-can have a big impact.
At ibg NDT, a new eddy current instrument can detect multiple types of surface flaws simultaneously with no resolution loss for any of the types. Bill Buschur, general manager of ibg NDT Systems Corp. (Farmington Hills, MI), likened it to radio: listeners can clearly hear only one station at a time-or in the case of eddy current, only one flaw type at a time-because multiple radios tuned to multiple stations produce only unintelligible noise.
Since writing my last note for October, I have been traveling yet again, to Spain, Morocco and, of course, the Midwest. I flew into Detroit three times since writing that column, attending the MS&T show at the end of September, a Powertrain Engineering and Manufacturing Alliance (PEMA) press conference in October, and finished the year with a computed tomography lab open house in December.
Shimadzu (Columbia, MD) aims to match its “top of the line” testing machine, AG-X Autograph, with the right applications. Product manager Gilbert Vial says that their goal is to fit the machine to the application and create solutions, instead of products. Therefore, they will not try to sell this type of high-precision machine if the customer does not need a deluxe machine.
Baby coral and nondestructive testing (NDT) applications may not seem to have much in common, but a background in marine biology helped Charles Mazel develop a light for fluorescent NDT inspection. “When you work underwater, you have to think in terms of portability, ease of use and handling,” Mazel says.
The EXAscan, a self-positioning and portable handheld laser scanner, does not require an additional coordinate measuring machine (CMM) arm or other external tracking devices. The scanner, developed by Creaform (Québec, Canada), is able to scan highly detailed surfaces and small objects in many industries including automotive and aerospace. Its applications run from reverse engineering to design and manufacturing, inspection, digital mock-ups and simulation.
No one wants a product to fail. A materials test can prevent problems from occurring. “Materials testing is commonly performed to assess the performance of materials such as metals, plastics and ceramics under stress,” explains Mark Fridman, marketing manager at Mark-10 (Copiague, NY). As such, it is a growing area, with changes ranging from equipment to standards to software.
My latest adventures of roving editor-at-large in the world have recently taken me to Québec City, Canada. Although I’ve been to Ukraine, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Germany, Austria, France, Italy, England and Spain, along with Ecuador, Argentina and Mexico, I had never actually been to see our neighbors to the north.
While it is useful to have many special features, it is important to make sure they do not get in the way of functionality. That was the thinking behind the Quadra-Chek 300 digital readout system with video edge detection and image archiving, which allows operators to store snapshots of video images with part measurement data and user notations.
