Ultrasonic Testing Systems

Western Instruments was founded in 1965 to build ultrasonic testing equipment for welded tube and pipe — resistance welded, fusion welded, U&O submerged arc welded and spiral SAW — and its systems have been installed around the world. Each system has three parts that Western designs, manufactures and tests in house: the UT instrumentation, purpose-built mechanical probe suspensions and ancillary equipment, and the equipment controls and interlocks. The multichannel instrumentation shows A-scans alongside an event envelope that charts defects against mill speed, with gates that trigger lights, a horn and a paint sprayer on a weld defect and a gate that alarms on loss of coupling.

The Flash Gauge, one of Western's most significant contributions to the resistance welded tube industry, sits immediately downstream of the welder while the weld is still hot. Its probe and shoe assembly oscillates across the trimmed weld, taking around 1,000 thickness readings per stroke, and draws the ID and OD weld profiles and edge alignment in 0.002 in increments, with the average wall thickness either side of the weld. Western's pipe mill probes use 45° shear-wave transducers for weld testing and dual-element transducers for lamination and thickness testing, with ceramic wear buttons and an integral coupling and cooling manifold.