Low cost digital radiography system for weld joints and castings testing

A low cost digital radiography system (DRS) for testing weld joints and castings in laboratory was assembled. The DRS is composed from X-ray source, scintillator, first surface mirror with Aluminum coating, charged coupled device (CCD) camera and lens. The DRS was used to test flawed carbon steel welded plates with thicknesses up to 12 mm. The comparison between the digital radio-graphs of the plates weldments and the radiographs of the same plates weldments using medium speed film type had shown that, the detection capability of the weld flaws are nearly identical for the two radiography techniques, while the sensitivity achieved in digital radiography of the plates weldments was one Image Qualits Indicator (IQI) wire less than the sensitivity achieved by conventional radiography of the same plates weldments according to EN 462-1. Further, the DRS was also successfully used to test (100 × 100 × 100) mm3 Aluminum casting with artificial flaws of varied dimensions and orientations. The resulted digital radiographs of the casting show that, all the flaws had been detected and their dimensions can be measured accurately, this confirm that. The proposed DRS can be used to detect and measure the flaws in the Aluminum and others light metals castings accurately.