Fast component testing of aluminium castings

Casting is the most widely used method of forming aluminium. Technical advances, of course, have been made, but the principle remains the same: molten aluminium is poured into a mould to duplicate a desired pattern. UAE's industrial flagship, Dubai Aluminium Co. Ltd (DUBAL) casting operations have a total production capacity of 1,265,000 metric tonnes per year - the largest in the global aluminium industry.
MatriX Technologies, global supplier of inspection solutions and expert for automatic x-ray inspection, offers an innovative spiral CT X-ray system for industrial applications, such as aluminium castings. So far, computer tomography is not established for inline inspection due to scanning times lasting minutes. The new XCTube series is capable of realising scanning times in the range of seconds (< 30 sec. depending on the specimen). So inline CT becomes interesting for the automotive and supplying industry, especially regarding the 100% inspection of safety relevant aluminium castings as e.g. chassis or power train parts. Other applications can be found in the aviation industry with the inspection of rotor blades and aircraft turbines.
Core of the new system is a Siemens ring-tomograph with a continuously rotating X-ray tube-detector-unit (Gantry), which is currently the best-performing on the market. The powerful 100kW Straton x-ray tube setup with a multi-line UFC detector guarantees the acquisition of all projections needed for CT reconstruction within seconds. This high-speed core functionality allows a complete CT inspection including automatic analysis of an automotive chassis part in less than 30s with a voxel resolution of 120-400μm. The used spiral CT provides images of very good quality minimising disturbing spiral artifacts.
For several months MatriX Technologies is now working in cooperation with Siemens on the integration of the spiral CT technology, used for medical analysis so far, into an industrial production environment. As a specialist for complex automatic inspection solutions Matrix will offer the new XCTube series as a core for automatic X-ray system solutions. Focus of such a complex solution is the integration of the XCTube pass through system and the MIPS_NDT workflow and analyser software in the customer specific manufacturing flow. The CT analysis focuses clearly on the fully automatic evaluation of the CT volume and slice image data as well as on the efficient defect verification including the standard networking of an inline production environment via MES interface.
Main application is the detection of porosity/voids and impurities (as e.g. chips and sand remains). Visualisation of the volume data as well as automatic analysis is performed via the market leading Volume Graphics CT_Analyser Software (VG-StudioMax 2.x.). Verification of the detected defects can be executed via the verification module of the MIPS_process software.

Casting of aluminium at DUBAL
Dubal's facility is equipped to receive and process the entire primary aluminium production from their potlines. The hot, molten aluminium tapped from the cells is transferred by crucible to the casthouses, based on a tapping schedule.
Hot, molten aluminium received from the reduction cells is weighed and sent to specific furnaces depending upon product specifications. Metal, solid scrap and/or alloying additions are added and mixed in the furnaces, which are kept hot using natural gas as fuel. Metallurgical analysis verifies quality conformance to customer specifications before distributing the hot, molten, alloyed (or pure, unalloyed) aluminium to the relevant casting centre using a system of launders. The metal is cast into the moulds and transported using conveyors that operate at predetermined rates for various product types, different alloys requireNike KD