EMPLOYING INNOVATIVE TECHNIQUES TO REDUCE INSPECTION TIMES

Shorter inspection periods mean lower revision costs and less tight re vision schedules, but must not detract from the quality of inspection findings. This requirement imposes upon the company performing the ins pection the need for top achievements both in quality management and i n the use of innovative techniques. Flexible equipment systems and ins pection techniques adapted to specific purposes are able to reduce ins pection times in many inspection jobs. As part of a complete system de signed to reduce inspection times, the new Saphir (Siemens Alok Phased Array integrated Reliable UT-System) inspection equipment system is t he core of most of the recent innovations. Being an integrated inspect ion equipment system, it is able to handle conventional US probes as w ell as arrays and phased arrays. It is open SOY further matching to sp ecific inspection and administrative requirements and developments, an d it may be incorporated in the network of an integrated system with a database. A technological leap in probe design in the past few years has allowed controllable wave fields to be generated which are in no w ay inferior to those of conventional probes with fixed angles of incid ence. In this way, a number of inspection techniques can be implemente d with a single probe. This reduces inspection times, setup and retool ing times, and doses. Typical examples already used in practice are th e LLT (longitudinal-longitudinal-transverse waves) technique and the i ntegration of inspections for longitudinal and transverse defects in a single rtm. In the near future, surfaces with complicated curvatures will be inspected by novel modular robot systems consisting of individ ual modules of linear axes and rotational axes.