New Ultrasonic Inspection System for the CERN
26th February 2021
Laura Jeffrey
Marketing, Sonatest
Tecnitest Ingenieros S.L. has successfully completed the development and installation of an automatic ultrasonic (UT) part inspection system for the Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) service at CERN's Group for Mechanical and Materials Engineering.
The system has been tailored to the customer's needs to allow quality verifications of construction elements used by CERN, with state-of-the-art materials, and with a range of different sizes and geometries.
In January 2020, Tecnitest Ingenieros S.L. was awarded this ambitious project after presenting the most competitive technical and economic proposal in the public tender held. The system consists of a water immersion tank, in which differentiated inspection environments have been created that make use of the different technologies and methods used in ultrasound-based industrial inspection.
The main characteristics of this sophisticated system, as explained by Tecnitest's expert team, are:
- System with multiple axes controlled by software and specific actuators.
- Three parts positioning environments: on a reflective plate, on a rotating roller system, and on a rotary table.
- It integrates first-line ultrasound equipment for single-channel inspection (Socomate card) and Phased-Array (Sonatest Veo) respectively.
- Use of UT inspection modes: Pulse-Echo and Dual Transmission.
- Works in common frequency ranges and high frequency.
- Tecnitest control, acquisition, and evaluation software: VisualScan™
- Computer and screen area for system operation.
- Use of a wireless tablet that facilitates the delimitation of inspection areas, ultrasonic adjustment, and remote evaluation in real time.
- Size and layout adapted to the center’s laboratory spaces.
- Ecological system for water management and treatment.
Mr. Arnau, Project Leader at CERN for the procurement and installation of the system delivered by Tecnitest Ingenieros S.L. commented:
“I would undoubtedly highlight the capacity of Tecnitest Ingenieros S.L. to capture all the requirements that we have asked for and their acceptance to modify the development according to the suggestions that we made, which has resulted in a very flexible and functionally very complete system, which allows us to tackle the work of manufacturing new parts, with new advanced materials, ensuring the quality of the results."
The system is a benchmark for advanced research on materials, metrology and non-destructive testing environments of companies, technology consortia and universities. Providing that access restrictions due to the COVID pandemic permit it, CERN is open to receiving future visits to this facility to the heads of the research centres and laboratories who might consider building a similar environment.
You can find out more about Tecnitest Ingenieros S.L. at www.tecnitestndt.net