Mar 18
Introduction This case study was performed to demonstrate how routine X-ray CT inspection adds value to medical implant production, ensuring quality and reliability. This particular case is for 3D printed (additively manufactured) titanium hip and knee implants but the methodology is applicable to all manufacturing techniques, not only additively manufactured implants. X-ray CT inspection is …
Apr 24
Custom medical implants can be made to suit an individual patient using additive manufacturing (3D printing) technology. Below is the design file of the custom titanium implant including support structures. The part was designed and built at the Centre for Rapid Prototyping and Manufacturing (CRPM) at the Central University of Technology (CUT) in Bloemfontein, South …
Mar 17
This post shows the type of analysis possible for commercial non-destructive testing customers, specifically to demonstrate what is possible and at what cost. Costs are excluding 7% admin fee and excluding VAT at 14%. It is laid out in a step by step process, where a typical customer will make use of steps 1-3 while …
Feb 09
Image Quality Indicators (IQIs) are used in commercial 2D X-ray inspections to confirm detail detectability of the system. In the simplest case these are wires with well known thicknesses. It is not generally well known that 3D X-ray systems can also make 2D inspections very easily and shown below are such images of a standard …
Jan 28
In this example a typical 3D X-ray analysis is presented of some radio-controlled airplane engine parts. Thanks to Clinton from Micton Hobbies in Somerset West, for loaning us the parts. Here are photos of the parts: The engine casing is a light metal casting, containing pores/defects. The 3D images clearly show all the defects down …
Jan 06
Two of the four bolts holding the engine of a 5 year old car of a well known German brand broke off, apparently after driving over a Johannesburg speedbump. The customer sent the broken bolt for a microCT scan for further inspection, with images showing the results below (cracks are black lines). Clearly, there are …
Nov 04
One part of an oil pump was scanned to demonstrate the quality of 3D information, which can be used for quality inspection or reverse engineering. See images below of slice and 3D images of internal porosity. Clearly there is one very large pore (coloured in red) which is shown in slice images also. Close-up of …
Nov 04
This example shows a water pump, with a porosity/defect analysis performed on one region of the casting. This shows how easily casting porosity can be identified and quantified (each pore has its void volume and other parameters calculated). The analyzed region has its surface data also available for output to STL format, for reverse engineering …
Jul 22
A wristwatch is a good everyday example of what can be done with this technology, with good scan quality and enough analysis time. A normal digital X-ray image movie shows the capability of live X-ray imaging, where you can see the watch tick: 04072014_02 Watch X-ray 2 7FPS~4 All the X-ray images in a scan …
Jun 30
In this work, a Titanium aerospace investment casting was analyzed by X-ray micro Computed Tomography (X-ray microCT). The geometry cast and evaluated was supplied by Boeing, and was supplied to CSIR as a design file. This geometry is used to benchmark titanium casting processes and suppliers against aerospace standards. Key features of interest are internal …
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