Non-Destructive Testing Services

Non-destructive testing (or NDT) is a variety of testing techniques, which evaluates the properties of a metal component, in a non-destructive way, thus leaving you with an undamaged component once the testing is over. This is very useful when the metal component is in daily service or highly valuable.

If you are looking for a non-destructive testing services company in the greater Los Angeles, California area, Rickard Metals is the leader with 25+ years of experience managing NDT for steel, nickel, aluminum, titanium, and alloy steels.

Some of the NDT testing services we oversee include:

Hardness Testing

Hardness testing is useful to correlate with tensile strength and can be done with smaller samples. We perform two types of hardness testing:

• Brinell Hardness – this hardness test presses a hard spherical indenter with an exactly defined force onto the test piece and then evaluate the surface area of the indentation. This NDT technique requires a larger sample and is useful for non-uniform materials.
• Rockwell Hardness – this hardness test measures the permanent depth of indentation of a hard indenter under a test force. This NDT technique has a larger range and uses less material.

Corrosion Resistance Testing

Corrosion resistance testing (also known as the “Salt Spray Test”) is a non-destructive test, which provides a controlled corrosive environment (salt spray fog) in order to test resistance to the exposed material. In doing so, the material is placed in salt water at a determined PH level and analyzed overtime for any traces of corrosion.

Plate Thickness Testing

Plate thickness testing is a nondestructive method for testing plating thickness by x-ray spectrometry. This method can be employed to measure plating thickness when other measuring techniques are not possible. It is used routinely to control the quality and production costs of manufactured or incoming parts and components by measuring the coating thickness of single or multiple layers as well as their composition with no sample preparation.

Fluorescent Penetrant Inspection

Fluorescent Penetrant Inspection (also known as FPI) is a NDT liquid penetrant test used to detect surface-breaking flaws and cracks in non-porous samples. In doing so, the material is submerged in a fluorescent penetrant. If there is a crack, the penetrant will seep inside and after being washed and dried the material is inspected under high-intensity UV lighting for evaluation of any flaws.

Ultrasonic Testing

Ultrasonic testing is an alternative technique to FPI for finding invisible flaws in a given material using the propagation and reflection of ultrasonic sound waves. In doing so ultrasonic waves are applied from a power source to a probe. A computer operates the probe and monitors any echos (cracks) found within the material.