You might be surprised to know cast metal products can be found in 90 percent of manufactured goods and equipment throughout the world. From critical components for aircraft and automobiles to home appliances and surgical equipment, cast metal products play an important role in today’s economy especially in the United States. The U.S. is the world’s largest supplier, shipping $18 billion worth of products annually (according to the Office of Industrial Technologies report, Metal Casting – Industry of the Future).

Thanks to most recent developments, computed tomography (CT) is now an affordable and efficient
technology for non-destructive testing of workpieces made of a vast variety of materials. While digital radiography provides two-dimensional fluoroscopic images, computed tomography typically rotates the object between the X-ray tube and the flat-panel detector 360° and captures several hundred to well over a thousand X-ray images from various angles.

Additive manufacturing (AM) is one of the most revolutionary processes to come along in many years, making a dramatic impact on the industrial market. Also known as 3D printing, AM is a manufacturing technique that builds objects layer by layer using materials such as polymers, metals, and composites. This fast-evolving technology is changing the way engineers think about product design by offering enormous flexibility in what is geometrically possible. However, the more complex the design, the more challenging (and necessary) it can be to inspect in the quality control process.

Starting out mainly as a prototyping technology Additive Manufacturing (AM) gained tremendous momentum for  use in industrial applications over the last 5 years. For highly demanding functional parts, laser beam powder bed fusion (LB-PBF) became the most dominant AM technology.

Within the realm of X-ray inspection for electronics there are a wide range of applications, so a single type of X-ray tube is not a "one-size-fits-all" solution. To address the demands of industries such as electronics manufacturing, better X-ray system manufacturers offer various non-destructive test solutions based on the power, kV and feature recognition capabilities electronics producers need.

The “open” transmission X-ray tube was a major step forward for x-ray inspection. This technology itself is  almost 55 years old, but was adopted for X-ray inspection for electronics in 1982 when the German company Feinfocus introduced the first open Microfocus tube. Most  modern high technology electronics systems use Open Tubes.