Engine inspections

Pic: Courtesy of Olympus 

Recent months have seen a surge in demand for hired video borescopes and many of these instruments are being used for engine inspection. Ashtead Technology’s Josh Thomas believes this is happening for three reasons: “Firstly, borescopes enable inspection without the cost and delay of dismantling engines. Secondly, instrumentation technology has advanced considerably recently and the latest video borescopes are very light and easy to use, but provide extremely high quality images. Thirdly, we now stock a wide range of the latest inspection equipment so that clients can rent the most appropriate equipment for each job.”

Borescope inspections are undertaken wherever internal components are difficult to access, and on both installed and uninstalled engines. For example, engine and gearbox manufacturers use them as part of their quality control procedures. “A number of motorsport teams, including Formula 1, have recently hired borescopes to help improve engine efficiency, and they have employed our high speed cameras to assess gearbox performance. However, we also have customers in other sectors including all sections of the automotive sector and clients with industrial engines and turbines.”

One of the latest additions to Ashtead Technology’s fleet of NDT inspection instruments is the Olympus IPLEX UltraLite. Weighing just 700 grams, it incorporates a combined control and display unit that fits in the palm of one hand and frees the other hand to guide the probe insertion tube. Observed images can be stored on a memory card as high-quality JPEG images and MPEG-4 movies.