Efficient Volume Digitizing with Adaptive Computerized Tomography

Common industrial computed tomography (CT) scanners, which are suitable for big cast parts such as cylinder heads are usually equipped with a 450 kV X-ray tube and scintillator line detectors. The major drawback of these systems is that 3D data acquisition is a quite time consuming task, because an object has to be scanned slice by slice. Acquiring CT data from a whole cylinder head can take several hours if not even days. In the context of the European research project FATIMA (First Article Tomography Inspection Methodology Advancement) EMPA developed software to accelerate the data acquisition procedure from line detector systems. Depending on the geometry of the cast part this so-called "adaptive scanning" permits a reduction of scanning time of about 10 to 50% with accuracy improved at the same time. This contribution describes the method and shows applications from the casting of vehicle engines.