Ultrasonic Sciences Ltd

Ultrasonic Sciences Ltd (USL) is a specialist in the design and manufacture of ultrasonic instrumentation and bespoke automated inspection systems. Systems are based on custom-designed scanners, multi-axis cartesian scanners, industrial robots or a combination. These incorporate USL's unique range of PC-based ultrasonic, data acquisition and motion control expansion boards.

Systems are provided for industrial, laboratory and research and development applications. They vary in size from 350 x 350 mm high-frequency immersion units to 35 m-long scanning systems. Many of these are installed in very demanding industrial conditions, with round-the-clock usage and completely automated operation.

USL supplies equipment into industries such as aerospace, metal manufacturing, rail and general engineering and semiconductor manufacturing, specialising particularly in the following areas:

• High-speed immersion inspection systems with single-channel, multi-channel and phased array electronics, contour following of complex curves, multi-gate acquisition, real-time normalisation over distorted product and other sophisticated features
• A range of systems specifically designed for MRO and CAMO applications including robotic eddy current test cells
• Through-transmission water jet inspection systems for composites, with up to 20 axes and complex contour following on ten simultaneous axes
• Systems for the inspection of hollow railway axles in situ on the train
• In-line or offline systems for the inspection of tube, bar, billet and plate
• Acoustic microscopes for high-resolution imaging of components such as integrated circuit assemblies.

The USL expansion boards can be used for the upgrade of existing systems and for OEM applications, using Windows software supplied by USL or custom-produced. These boards, although PC-based, have a performance that exceeds the best of more conventional instruments.

USL systems have been installed and supported on every continent.