The USM Vision portable ultrasonic weld inspection system from GE Measurement & Control's Inspection Technologies division has delivered impressive productivity benefits for Studio VM, the Italian technical services company. It has also enabled Studio VM to deploy technicians who are not experts in Phased Array (PA) and Time of Flight Diffraction (TOFD) to meet the needs of a major customer who required precise inspection using these advanced techniques.
Studio VM was founded in 1990 and currently offers a comprehensive portfolio of services using non-destructive testing (NDT) technologies, including eddy current, remote visual inspection and acoustic emission. Its ultrasonic capabilities range from hardness measurement and simple flaw detection to TOFD and PA. Customers include major oil and gas companies and general engineering firms throughout Europe.
A recent project involved the inspection of welded pipe for a major pipe manufacturer. In order to comply with inspection codes, it was necessary to inspect the circumferential welds of pipes manufactured by PA and TOFD. Studio VM already had an automatic circumferential weld inspection system, but was having problems using it. The manufacturer also had an identical circular weld inspection system, but this had proved unsuitable for the task. As a result, Studio VM decided to invest in a USM Vision system, which uses non-specialist PA and TOFD technicians to carry out the inspection, with interpretation of the results carried out by a single ultrasonic expert.
This proved to be a success, as Giampaolo Bruschi, owner of Studio VM, explains: "After a short training course for technicians provided by GE, we first used the USM Vision on circular welds in 46 cm diameter, 20 mm thick pipes, and our operators were soon able to analyze 34 welds in a 10-hour team effort. Since then, we have worked on welds in 12 mm thick pipes and, in 24 working days, one of our teams analyzed 585 joints, which required double analysis by TOFD or double analysis by PA when there was only access from one side. More recently, we worked on 8 mm pipes five times faster than X-ray inspection. Our end customer was of course very pleased with the speed and quality of the inspections and, as a service company, I'm very confident that our investment in GE's technology will continue to pay dividends."
USM Vision is a portable ultrasonic flaw detection system that combines software and hardware to make code-compliant inspection easy, reliable and fast. It obviously doesn't replace radiography in every case, but it offers users the possibility of eliminating radiographic constraints where necessary, and also enables them to make better use of the expertise of the limited number of ultrasonically qualified inspectors available.
Learn more: www.ge.com