VISUAL TESTING (NDE)

 Means of detecting and examining variety of surface flaws.

 Widely used for surface cracks.

Borescopes
 Long tubular optical device.
 Illuminates and allow inspection of inaccessible areas.
 Rigid or flexible tube
 Wide variety of length & diameters available.
 Types of optical connection(between objective & ocular lens)
1- Rigid tube with series of relay lens.
2- Tube normally flexible but rigid with bundle of optical fibers
3- Normally flexible tube wires carrying image signals from CCD (charged coupled device) at
distal tip.

 Objective lens may have fixed or adjustable focusing.

 Distal tip may have prisms and mirrors for direction and field of view.
 Illumination- by fiber optic light guide or lamp, sometimes LED used in videoscopes with working
length 15m.

Rigid Borescopes
 Limited to straight-line path.
 Length range 0.15 to 30m (0.5 to 100ft).
 Diameter range 0.9 to 70mm (0.035 to 2.75”).
 Magnification 3 to 4 X, up to 50 X available.
 Field of view generally 55° (60° in handbook). It may range from 10 to 90°.
 Some borescopes have orbital scan with rotating optical shaft. Amount of rotation vary from 120 to
370°.
Basic Design
 Series of achromatic relay lens in tube.
 Diameter range 4 to 70mm.
 Illumination by distal lamp or light guide bundle.

MiniBorescopes
 Series of achromatic relay lens in tube.
 Diameter range 0.9 to 2.7mm.
 Length range 110 to 170mm.
 High magnification up to 30 X.

Hybrid Borescopes
 Series of rod lens combined with convex lens.
 Have fewer glass-air boundaries reducing scattering.
 Diameter range 5.5 to 12mm.
 Length up to 990mm.

Extendable Borescopes
 Can construct longer borescopic tubes by joining extension tubes.
 Maximum length up to 30m.

Flexible borescopes
 Two types- flexible fiberscopes & videoscopes with a CCD image sensor.

Flexible fiberscopes
 Consist of light guide bundle and image guide bundle.
 Diameter range 1.4 to 13mm
 Length up to 12m
 Special quartz fiberscopes up to 90m.
 Small dia fibers give brighter image and better resolution.
 Field of view-40 to 60°, can range from 0 to 120°.

Videoscopes with CCD probes

 Involve electronic transmission of image to video monitor.
 Distal end has CCD chip, having thousands of light sensitive element array.
 Videoscopes have higher resolution than fiberscopes.
 Have longer working length.
 Reduces fatigue to eye
 No honeycomb or irregular shaped patterns.

Direction of View
 Circumference or panoramic heads- good for tubing or large cylinder structures.
 Forward head-for facing walls or bottom of blind holes and cavities.
 Forward-oblique/retrospective- viewing area just passed by advancing scope
 Suited for inspecting inside neck of cylinders and bottles.

Environment
 Special scopes for temperatures up to 1925°.
 Quartz fiberscopes- for radiation exposed area.

Image sensors
 Image orthicons and image isocons
 Vidicon or plumbicon television tubes
 Secondary electron coupled (SEC) tubes
 Charged coupled device (CCD)
 Optical holography

Vidicon- used at higher light levels

Orthicon, isocons & SEC- used at lower light levels
CCD- used for information processing applications. Better than above.

Magnification System
Toolmakers’ microscope
 Magnification range from 10 to 200X

Optical comparator
 Magnifications range 5 to 500X
 Comparison device
 Silhouette of part is magnified on large screen and compared to a optical comparator chart.

Lasers
 Used for surface inspections
 In-process surface flaws and measurement of surface defects and roughness