When it comes to the design, development and manufacture of ultrasonic measuring equipment, our service offering goes far beyond just a catalogue of standard products.
Our highly skilled Engineering and Research team have over 25 years’ experience in the development of cutting edge ultrasonic measurement products used extensively in the QA of medical devices, providing industry with ultrasonic non-destructive testing (NDT) capability and within academia and national measurement institutes throughout the world.
This means that we are ideally placed to help customers with the research and development of customised ultrasonic design concepts to fulfil specific and exacting needs. To illustrate this capability, let us look at an example of a a recent challenging project.
The customer requirement was for a short range, high resolution ultrasonic depth gauge. The novel application for ultrasonic technology involved a high resolution, two-dimensional array with each element of the array capable of functioning as a short-range pulse/echo transducer for depth gauging. The intended outcome was a high resolution image of an irregular surface.
In order to advance this concept beyond the research stage within a university, our customer sought an industrial partner capable of developing the project to completion and we became involved to look specifically at the front-end ultrasonic sensor. The product development process was based upon a high degree of interaction and co-operation between our team and the customer.
The sensor development considered many aspects including: optimisation of backing material, preparation of high density sensor arrays, generation of short duration ultrasonic pulses and simple but reliable inter-connection methods.
One of the critical factors in the success of this project has been the application of cutting edge electronic process to the ultrasonic sensor production.
We have now completed the first batch of pre-production arrays (with 4096 sensor) and have also produced next generation devices with 16,384 sensors.
