AMiquam ahead of Formnext: in-situ eddy-current inspection now detects 0.1 mm defects in thin walls

On a 0.75 mm thick 316L test wall, AMiquam’s in-situ eddy-current sensor detected every seeded defect down to 0.1 mm, in both through holes and blind holes, each showing as a distinct peak in the layer-by-layer signal. This opens the way to inspecting every layer of thin-walled parts such as TPMS heat exchangers during the build and issuing an EC inspection certificate at the end of it. On larger parts such as aeroengine blades, defects of 0.2 mm are detected in the skin, which is built with conformal laser paths; smaller ones may also be detectable but are hard to produce on demand for validation. In the bulk, where the higher density of energy and non-conformal scan strategy makes the microstructure uneven, the resulting signal variations limit detection to about 0.5, depending on material, laser strategy and geometry.