Johnson and Allen Ltd and Vibrant Corporation announce international joint venture

10/10/2008

Vibrant Corporation (Albuquerque, USA) along with Johnson and Allen Ltd (Sheffield, UK) have announced that the companies have formed a joint venture to provide Process Compensated Resonance Testing services and equipment to the United Kingdom.

The new company, Vibrant NDT Ltd, will initially be based at the Sheffield University Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC).

"The opportunity to partner with a proven partner in the UK, and to be located in the prestigious Factory of the Future at the AMRC (a joint venture between Boeing and Sheffield University) is a dream come true for Vibrant," said Vibrant Corporation President Lem Hunter. "Vibrant has been working with customers in the UK for nearly 2 years. The new company will allow us to be much more responsive to the needs of those customers and to rapidly expand our service offerings."

Jon Johnson, Director of Johnson and Allen Ltd, and now also one of the Directors of Vibrant NDT Ltd, had this to say: "This green technology offers the prospect of changing the face of NDT in many important areas. We are proud to be involved."

PCRT is a resonance-based technology that measures and compares minute vibrations introduced in a part. Pattern recognition technology is then applied to the resulting 'resonance spectra' of parts to determine if the part tested is similar to known acceptable parts and free of the spectral variations associated with defective parts. Process Compensated Resonance Testing can not only find multiple defect types in one 'scan' but also sort components as to their overall strength, something which other forms of NDT struggle to achieve.

"PCRT is environmentally friendly when compared to many existing techniques. It is fast and extremely accurate in rejecting defect parts. It has reduced total testing cost and increased production yield in every application I have seen. It is exactly the kind of new technology we have been looking for at Johnson and Allen," added Jon Johnson.

The test requires no chemicals, uses low energy and can 'sort' a part within seconds using pattern recognition software. The software was developed by Los Alamos Laboratories in the US (who undertook a large part of the original A-Bomb development programme).

www.johnsonandallen.co.uk

www.vibrantndt.com

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