Global Fastener News

Air Force Automates Fastener Inspection Capabilities

Jason Sandefur

The Air Force nondestructive inspection team, or NDI, at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma is working to acquire non-contact scanning equipment that would allow for inspections without the probe contacting the surface of the part.
“A proposed scanner would allow a single device to scan aircraft skin surrounding a fastener without having to change probes to accommodate different fastener sizes,” according to Department of Defense documents. The proposed device would work for both raised and flushed fasteners.
The improved scanning capability is part of NDI’s push for new equipment and improvement in inspection processes to increase the reliability of field inspections and the probability of finding smaller flaws on aircraft critical components.
The first step was a $1 million grant to take the mechanical probes used on the current systems at the Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center here and use them for manual inspections on aircraft parts.
Throughout the aerospace industry, a traditional manual eddy current inspection is roughly capable of finding a one-tenth of an inch crack, as opposed to the OC-ALC’s engine inspection shop that can find cracks a tenth of that size with the automated systems.
“One key performance parameter of this program is to cut the current probability of detection size of surface eddy current inspections in half Air Force wide,” explained Karl Kraft, the Air Force NDI program office lead engineer.
The new mechanical probes contain a specially designed coil that conforms to the surface and allows less degree of movement, increasing the probability of finding a smaller crack.
“This type of equipment will be used to reduce human factors that adversely affect inspector performance.” �2007/2008 FastenerNews.com