Computed Tomography – a highly potential tool for industrial quality control and production near measurements

Computed tomography (CT) using x-rays, originally developed to visualise inner human structure, has become an important tool for industrial applications. CT systems are at present not only used for the non-destructive defect analysis of parts. Only a few years ago CT started to be used for dimensional measurements. It is the only way to measure the inner and outer geometry of parts in a non-destructive way and with high data density. The article demonstrates the spread of applications of CT for quality control and production near measurements by selected examples. A drawback of CT is at present that measurement deviations caused by complex influence factors often cannot be quantified. Nevertheless, concepts exist to analyse measurement deviations and to correct them. One example is the correction of scaling factors e.g. by the measurement of reference bodies. For selected measurement tasks ISO/TS 15530-3 can be utilised to determine the measurement uncertainty.