Cars, we rely on them to get us from point A to point B on a daily basis. Through the years, car manufacturers have been driven to create a faster, safer and more economical vehicle to keep up with competition. One of the issues the automotive industry faced was how to reduce the weight of the car while increasing the strength to protect drivers involved in accidents. The solution was Tailor Welded Blanks.
Tailor Welded Blanks (TWB) are made up of multiple sheets of steel which are welded together to create the frame of a car. The sheets of steel are made up of different thickness, strength and coating that give car manufactures the ability to use higher-strength material on stress areas of the car while using thinner pieces to reduce the weight of the car. In order to guarantee the condition of the welds joining these different materials, non-destructive testing inspections are performed.
Before the late 90’s the best way to inspect the welds was using a vision system that looks for cracks or defects on the surface of the weld. In 1999, Innerspec Technologies introduced the temate® Si-WB tailor welded blank inspection system using EMAT technology. Using a single sensor, the system not only detects surface defects, top and bottom, but also internal defects at production speeds. It is also the only system available with sample-by-sample self-calibration, guaranteeing 100% repeatability.
Since its introduction, the system has evolved to meet industry requirements and to provide new features. The TEMATE Si-WB is well known as the most advanced NDT system for volumetric inspection of tailor welded blanks and has become the standard for leading manufacturers.
Main characteristics of this system include:
* Volumetric inspection of linear and curvilinear welds
* Detection and discrimination between planar and point defects
* Inspection speeds up to 1m/s
* Can inspect all carbon steels, aluminum and stainless steel blanks
* Most proven and reliable system in the market
* User friendly software that is able to provide real time good-weld, bad-weld results that require no interpretation by the operator.
The TEMATE Si-WB is the only system that is capable of detecting all types of internal and visible defects. With over 100 systems installed, the TEMATE Si-WB is the most popular inspection system in the world.
To find out more about the TEMATE Si-WB visit our tailor welded blanks webpage and contact a sales engineer.
