CT, or computed tomography, is now commonly used in various industrial metrology settings, both in the lab and online or inline for product evaluation and packaging integrity assessment. The main advantage is that it allows the inspection of a part’s interior structure or a package’s closure functionality without causing any harm or destruction to the objects themselves.

Industrial CT scanners utilize the same type of technology as CT scanners in hospitals and doctors’ offices, taking multiple readings from various angles and converting the CT gray scale images into voxel-based 3D point clouds. Once the CT scanner generates the point cloud, a specialist can generate a CAD-to-part comparison map, construct a 3D model of the part, or reverse engineer the part to suit their needs. In the packaging world, especially where pharmaceutical or personal products are concerned, this ability is paramount. High-speed scanning inline, for example, can examine the seals on pill bottles for airtight quality assurance, while online or lab scanning can instantly compare a manufactured product to the CAD program in various ways.

Industrial scanners offer a multitude of advantages, such as obtaining internal structure of an object nondestructively, validating extremely accurate internal dimensions, allowing comparison to reference models, no shaded zones, compatibility with all shapes and sizes, no post-processing work and extremely high-resolution imaging.

Read the full article at ctemag.com.