Baugh & Weedon partner Tecnitest successfully completes installation of automated UT part inspection system at CERN
11/05/2021
Tecnitest Ingenieros SL 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 to be performed for construction elements used by CERN, with state-of-the-art materials and a range of different sizes and geometries.
In January 2020, Tecnitest Ingenieros SL 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 system has multiple axes controlled by software and specific actuators, with 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, and offers pulse-echo and dual transmission inspection modes, working in common frequency ranges and at a high frequency.
Tecnitest control, acquisition and evaluation software VisualScan™ is included and a computer and screen area are used for system operation; the use of a wireless tablet facilitates the delimitation of inspection areas, ultrasonic adjustment and remote evaluation in real time. The size and layout of the system can be adapted to the centre’s laboratory spaces.
Mr Arnau, Project Leader at CERN for the procurement and installation of the system delivered by Tecnitest, commented: “I would undoubtedly highlight the capacity of Tecnitest Ingenieros SL 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, allowing 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 NDT environments of companies, technology consortia and universities. Providing that access restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic permit it, CERN is open to receiving future visits to this facility from heads of the research centres and laboratories that might consider building a similar environment.
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