Radiography Testing (RT)

Overview: What is Radiography Testing?

Working principle of Radiography Testing:

Radiation 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 film or digital sensor. The result is a greyscale image (or 3D model in case of CT inspection) of the inspected part. Defects can be indicated based on different shadings (darker areas) of the image.

Variations:

X-ray inspection on film material (classic RT)
Digital X-ray inspection, also called “non-film” (RT-NF / RT-D)
Computed tomography (CT)

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 Radiography Inspection Services

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

We offer radiography inspection services for manufacturing in many industry sectors and in-service inspection (Part-145) for aerospace, Level 3 consultancy as well as RT training courses.

Typical use cases for digital and conventional RT include:

Welds (e.g. on ships and pipes)
Complex printed parts
Industrial plants
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.

Learn more about our computed tomography inspection services.

Digital radiography in Toulouse

In Toulouse, we can handle large parts up to over 1 meter in size and a maximum mass of 100 kg with our digital radiography machine. It has approximately 2 % variation in thickness passed through. Our X-ray tube operates at 225 kV at has a JIMA resolution of 2,0 µm.

Our RT machine brings a variety of advantages, such as:

creating automatic programs for repeatability of serial parts
any type of material can be inspected
automatic porosity/inclusion detection algorithms in tomography

Testia France is qualified by Airbus for the inspection of ALM parts (additive layer manufacturing) according to AITM6-7007:

QL 1 on inconel 16 mm
QL 1 on titanium 16 mm
QL 2/3 on 26 mm titanium

Mobile RT inspection

Testia has a complete NDT lab on wheels: Our inspection van contains everything needed for NDT inspections, from test devices to lab equipment. This mobile service is offered Germany-wide for RT plus for all other NDT methods also in Austria, Switzerland and the Netherlands.