Computed Tomography Inspection (CT)

Overview: What is Computed Tomography Inspection?

Working principle of CT Inspection:

Radiation, usually from an X-ray source, is directed at a part that needs to be inspected. The part’s material and structure determine how much of the radiation is emitted at the opposite side of the part onto a digital sensor. For computed tomography, this process is repeated from multiple positions to intersect several layers of the part. With these repeated measurements from different perspectives, the result is a 3D model of the inspected part. Defects can be indicated based on different shadings (darker areas) of the image. CT scans are much more complex than a 2-dimensional X-ray scan and thus provide far more details.

Use cases: detection of defects within parts, e.g. weldings, composite structures / creation of digital 3D images of parts

Materials: metals, additive manufactured parts, composites, ceramics, plastics, electronic components

Testia’s qualifications: EN 4179 & ISO 9712 – see the full list of Testia’s qualifications on our certification page

Testia's Computed Tomography Inspection Services

Digital Radiography Center at EcoMat Bremen (picture © WFB, Jonas Ginter)

We offer computed tomography inspection services for manufacturing in many industry sectors and in-service inspection (Part-145) for aerospace, Level 3 consultancy. Some of Testia’s training centers offer training courses for digital radiogaphy (DRT) / non-film radiography (RT-NF) .

Typical use cases for Computed Tomography (CT) inspection include:

Dimensional checks (CAD & real part in comparison)
Complex printed parts
Pore content analysis
Electronic components

Something unique: The digital RT center in Bremen

The digital radiography center in Bremen – a cooperation of Testia and Airbus – is the only one of its kind in European aerospace: It is comprised with machines for CT, digital and film-based X-ray inspection, all in one place. Testia offers these services for all industries, making its decades-long experience from aerospace also available to your industry sector. We have qualified inspectors for both EN 4179 and ISO 9712.

Our inspection machines in the digital Radiography center are suitable for parts with up to 500 mm diameter, 800 mm height and 20 kg for CT inspection. We also offer other radiography inspection services besides CT.

Qualified for a huge range of materials: CT inspections in Ottobrunn

Our CT facility in Ottobrunn is the only one worldwide to be qualified according to AITM6-7006 for such a large variety of materials: aluminium, titanium, steel, inconel and various plastics (e.g. CFRP, additive manufactured parts).

We can CT-scan parts with up to 500 mm diameter x 1000 mm height with our machine at Ottobrunn. The resulting data is at the cutting edge of possibilites for analytics, containing more than 720 GB per data set.

Furthermore, our CT research & development team is based in Ottobrunn, always striving for innovative solutions like, for example, in-process defect detection (“in-line monitoring”) using CT inspecion directly embedded into the manufacturing process. Further down on this page, in the related news section, you may find a selection of our CT-related research projects.

Testia’s CT inspection capacities in Toulouse

With our CT machine in Toulouse we can scan parts up to 140 mm and 170 width (or diameter). The lowest available resolution is approximately 25 µm (but the size or surface of the part is much smaller at this resolution). There is approximately 1 % variation in the thickness passed through.