Human error is inevitable, but nondestructive testing (NDT) helps prevent disasters by meticulously checking materials and components, ensuring their readiness and averting potential losses of lives and finances.

Aircraft wheels are put through aggressive and cyclic NDT inspection protocol and the wheel’s potential for failure has led manufacturers to require various repetitive inspections at regular intervals.

Medical devices, both the actual equipment and patient hardware, are some of the most regulated items in all of industry. Medical manufacturers are held to the highest of standards and these typically equal, and can even exceed, the aerospace and nuclear sectors.

Human perception is the ultimate standard for determining the visual quality of a device. However, the use of human inspection as a quality control method for development or production of devices is problematic because of the statistical variation between observers.

Marposs Corp. has expanded its MIDA VTS visual tool setter family with the addition of the VTS WF45 and WF85 wide field versions suited for non-contact measuring and verifying “double-sided”, larger diameter tools. Relying upon LED technology, the wide field versions can perform both profile and surface integrity inspection of the entire tool front to back, identifying any minor faults in the work tool that could affect workpiece integrity.

In the plastics industry, it is common for molded components to have visual manufacturing defects leading to increased scrap rates, part rejects, and expensive rework.