£1million investment in NDT rental fleet

Rental specialist Ashtead Technology has announced a £1 million investment in new Non Destructive Testing (NDT) equipment as part of its strategy to create an NDT Centre of Excellence. “This latest series of purchases significantly enhances our fleet of NDT instrumentation and helps to ensure that we are able to meet the full breadth of our customers’ test and inspection equipment needs across almost any industry,” comments James Carlyle, General Manager, adding: “We have made this investment so that our customers don’t have to; most of these instruments come with a hefty capital cost, so the ability to rent them, whilst talking advantage of our technical support, is a major advantage.” The new instruments are designed for NDT inspection work such as flaw detection, corrosion, delamination and crack assessment, thickness measurement, and casting, forging and weld checking. Each instrument has been selected to ensure that users are able to choose equipment that matches both their specification and budget requirements, and Ashtead’s in-house experts are available to ensure that the most appropriate instrument is hired for every job. NDT Market Manager Neil Harrap says: “The new products ensure that our fleet of NDT instruments includes both conventional and advanced NDT equipment; most of the latest additions are relatively new to the market, so these acquisitions are a good example of our commitment to offer the most advanced instruments available.” Ashtead’s NDT instrument fleet already includes a wide selection of advanced instruments such as the Olympus OmniScan MX2 and SX, but this has been enhanced by the addition of the Ectane; a high-performance surface array and multi-technology tube inspection system, which is now available for hire in the UK for the first time. Employing ultrasonic, eddy current and electromagnetic technology for the detection and assessment of flaws such as cracks or corrosion in conductive materials, the Ectane is significantly more advanced than anything else on the market. Increasing the range of options for flaw detection, the EPOCH 600 is also included in the new acquisitions; a digital ultrasonic flaw detector offering a high quality flaw detection platform with exceptional ease of use. The EPOCH 600 is designed to meet the requirements of EN 12668-1 and allows a full range of standard and optional flaw detection features. A rugged, ergonomic design with the flexible PerfectSquare™ pulser and digital filtering capabilities, enable operation in almost any inspection environment. A further acquisition, the NORTEC 600C, has also been designed for durability and simplicity of use. Employing eddy current flaw detection and weighing just 1.6kg, the NORTEC 600C offers genuine handheld versatility, with a hand-strap that provides direct thumb access to the key controls. The range of ultrasonic flaw detectors is further enhanced by the addition of the Sonatest Sitescan D20+ which has a scroll-wheel to enable fast navigation through functions via a menu structure that has been designed to guide the user through tasks, with operation quickly becoming second nature. The Sitescan D20+ uses a broadband amplifier together with several narrow bands for improved performance, together with a square wave pulser and a Time Corrected Gain feature. An integrated pipe stand and a standard camera-mount fixing means that it is possible to free both hands for scanning. Combining a thickness gauge and a flaw detector in one single lightweight instrument, the ‘USM Go’ has added an extra level of flexibility and is available for hire with optional thickness and flaw kits. This means that NDT personnel now only need to carry one inspection instrument to perform accurate and dependable thickness measurement and flaw detection. A further benefit of this dual modality is a significant reduction in operator training times. The WeldCheck Eddy Current Flaw Detector from ETher NDE has also been included – largely because of its popularity in applications such as offshore and rope access. The WeldCheck is lightweight, compact and supplied in a tough aluminium alloy powder-coated outer case and is able to use absolute, bridge and reflection probes without the need for adaptors. In summary, Neil Harrap says: “It is extremely important to use the correct inspection tool for each application, so the availability of a comprehensive fleet of instruments that can be hired, means that our customers do not have to compromise the quality of their inspection work. If anybody wishes to learn more about the use of these instruments, we will be demonstrating them at ‘NDT 2014’ in Manchester, 9th to 11th September.” For further information on Ashtead Technology’s NDT Centre of Excellence, please visit: www.ashtead-technology.com or call 0845 270 2707.

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