Cost of X-Ray machine?

[Mid Wales welder]

Thanks for this, again, really interesting. This is something that I’m interested in.
I must say at this point that some of the answers here just go to prove how wonderful forums can be - there’s no way that I would have learned so much, say, in a conversation with a colleague, for example.

If I ever get any spare time and when the covid thing has calmed down I would be happy to give a demo sometime.
tats the beauty of having plenty of knowledgeable people in one place.

 

[Rrunnach]

A few year back I viewed O&G work, welding and spooling at SS7 Leith Dock base, manual welding with STT process, NDE was automated, which was very interesting, with water used as medium.

 

[HughF]

A few year back I viewed O&G work, welding and spooling at SS7 Leith Dock base, manual welding with STT process, NDE was automated, which was very interesting, with water used as medium.

I've seen a few automated UT heads on S lay firing lines (not in the flesh, but in promotional material) , smart things... Those S lay lines are genius.

 

[Rrunnach]

I have a couple of pics, which I’ll dig out, of the actual spooling onto the vessel, it is an amazing process viewing the pipe being formed around the spool, without any fractures at joints. I would love to view the removal process.

 

[HughF]

I have a couple of pics, which I’ll dig out, of the actual spooling onto the vessel, it is an amazing process viewing the pipe being formed around the spool, without any fractures at joints. I would love to view the removal process.

That's J lay isn't it? Where they spool it up inside then shoot it out the stinger as they move.

 

[SAFC73]

That's J lay isn't it? Where they spool it up inside then shoot it out the stinger as they move.

No reel lay, j lay is vertical in the tower

 

[SAFC73]

Reel lay

j lay

 

[tom2207]

You don’t need to macro section it to see the penetration

If the spec calls for stringers , you weld stringers . probably a better lesson to follow the spec than weld what you like ,,,

 

[davidjohnperry]

If your multi runs look awful shouldn't you teach them to make better runs or did I miss understand answer. I didn't see any thing in the wps for x Ray only visual and cut and etch and break test you could always use ultra sound to test butt welds but normally tee fillets are ut mag partial and visual

 

[gt6s]

Easy get a chunk of uranium & a film camera.

 

[craigten]

If your multi runs look awful shouldn't you teach them to make better runs or did I miss understand answer. I didn't see any thing in the wps for x Ray only visual and cut and etch and break test you could always use ultra sound to test butt welds but normally tee fillets are ut mag partial and visual

Pedantic. Perhaps bit ‘awful’ but the whole WPS just seemed odd in that it wouldn’t allow a weaved capping run.

Problem solved now - they’ve allowed vertical up T Fillet instead.

 

[davidjohnperry]

Pedantic. Perhaps bit ‘awful’ but the whole WPS just seemed odd in that it wouldn’t allow a weaved capping run.

Problem solved now - they’ve allowed vertical up T Fillet instead.

That maybe great but that still doesn't cover them for a butt weld a vertical up covers v up flat and horizontal don't think it covers over head im new to the welding thing but I can't see how this solves the problem for the butt weld test

 

[davidjohnperry]

Also looking at the wps a root and cap on 6mm should be sufficient even on 10 mm root fill and one or two stringers for a cap for that many runs your looking for 15mm plate plus any ways. Hope everything works out for you fella

 

[Wedg1e]

Leaving aside the whys and hows of the need, we occasionally have used x-ray systems for sale. Price depending on age and output: at one end you have sub-100kV and at the other (very rarely) 450kV. Sometimes we have self-contained cabinet systems, typically 130kV and 3mA output which can handle small parts. We're just about to decommission a 6MeV linear accelerator, should you need to get through some properly dense stuff - but it's destined for the scrapyard unless anyone shouts up very quickly. To show how technology has moved on (and partly why it's being scrapped), the business end is the size of my van and needs a plant room and a control room to support it. The replacement is the size of a coffin and the electronics would fit into a fridge-freezer (and cost over a million quid).

The x-ray source is only the start, then you need somewhere to run it and I can tell you that the HSE and Environment Agency will be breathing down your neck, holding a sheaf of paperwork and wanting all your money, and that's before they even start to think about whether they'll let you do it.

The amount of shielding you need depends on whether you go for brick/concrete, or lead. That linac I mentioned has 4 foot thick boron-loaded concrete walls around a cell big enough to reverse an artic into (it's also partially buried in the ground). A 200kV 6mA directional in a room about 8 x 8 feet will need 10-12mm of lead all round, and a 320kV set at 10mA delivering doses for cancer research 38-50mm of lead - I know that because I've built 4 such cabinets and they each weigh 1100kg. A new 320kV 10mA CP by the likes of Comet is around £65K.

Gamma radiography is so much grief now that we don't get involved. We used to deal in the hardware as well as souces such as Ir-192, Cs-137, Ytterbium, Americium and even Co-60 but we got stung with massive disposal costs thanks to the agencies mentioned above so we keep out of it now.
If I detailed some of the incidents I know of, Parm would have even less hair

 

[Wedg1e]

A few year back I viewed O&G work, welding and spooling at SS7 Leith Dock base, manual welding with STT process, NDE was automated, which was very interesting, with water used as medium.

We've built a few automated and semi-automated ultrasonic inspection systems over the last 25 years or so that use water to couple the sound waves into the part. Sometimes we combine it with a close-proximity Eddy Current probe to look for surface-breaking defects simultaneously (or consecutively).
Artillery shells are inspected this way in manufacture - those little gas bottles used by Sodastreams used to be checked in the same fashion.

I did some work onboard the Allseas Solitaire when she was on the Tyne... supposedly the biggest vessel they ever had on the river.

 

[Wedg1e]

I think it fair to say, interpretation and use of both X/Gamma & UT inspection, a good degree of skill is required.

Oh yes. Among other things, we do long-range UT of pipelines and corrosion-mapping the curved walls of buried tanks...

Edit: I once did an on-site demo to clients of the Scorpion tank wall scanner; essentialy a wire-guided car that uses magnets to stick to the wall of the tank while the operator drives it up and down. It uses a 'mouse ball' technique to get the sound waves into the wall. Unfortunately it couldn't cope with years of repainting; anywhere the rust had delaminated but was held in place by the paint, it thought the wall was only the thickness of the rust.
Some months later the site was destroyed by an explosion and fire, but it wasn't down to the condition of the tanks... it was Buncefield.

 

[Maker]

To show how technology has moved on (and partly why it's being scrapped), the business end is the size of my van and needs a plant room and a control room to support it. The replacement is the size of a coffin and the electronics would fit into a fridge-freezer (and cost over a million quid).

My dad showed me a new breast screening machine they've had commissioned at the hospital the other week. Three million quid and as you say, about the size of a coffin. The old one took up near enough the whole room.

 

[Wedg1e]

My dad showed me a new breast screening machine they've had commissioned at the hospital the other week. Three million quid and as you say, about the size of a coffin. The old one took up near enough the whole room.

A few years ago I and one of the other guys from work had interviews for jobs at the local NHS hospital which was setting itself up as a centre of excellence for cancer treatments; the job was to maintain the various MRI scanners, CAT scanners, targetted dosing etc.
It involved working days, while the machines were in use, just in case anything broke (they charge per 'shot' so downtime is down money); nights to fix anything that was broken, then almost every weekend as most of the maintenance tasks couldn't be completed overnight. On your weekends off you were on call, and it was rare to not get called in, apparently. I asked what you did if you were 'in' during the day but everything was working, and the guy showed me into an office where, in total silence, a few people were engrossed in reading, surrounded by piles of textbooks on medicine, nuclear physics and the like. You were also expected to be available for any and all training by the equipment manufacturers AND to help their engineers if they had to attend major breakdowns, even if it meant an overnighter.
So essentially you're after a service techie with no family life, a Masters in particle physics AND who can wield a spanner, for THAT much money? I queried. Oh yes, came the earnest reply.
I hope they found someone, but the guy from work and I fell about the place when we discussed it afterwards. I'm not particularly well-paid, but I manage to keep the hassle, grief and chew to manageable proportions.
Ironically, one of the benefits on offer was BUPA healthcare

 

[craigten]

A few years ago I and one of the other guys from work had interviews for jobs at the local NHS hospital which was setting itself up as a centre of excellence for cancer treatments; the job was to maintain the various MRI scanners, CAT scanners, targetted dosing etc.
It involved working days, while the machines were in use, just in case anything broke (they charge per 'shot' so downtime is down money); nights to fix anything that was broken, then almost every weekend as most of the maintenance tasks couldn't be completed overnight. On your weekends off you were on call, and it was rare to not get called in, apparently. I asked what you did if you were 'in' during the day but everything was working, and the guy showed me into an office where, in total silence, a few people were engrossed in reading, surrounded by piles of textbooks on medicine, nuclear physics and the like. You were also expected to be available for any and all training by the equipment manufacturers AND to help their engineers if they had to attend major breakdowns, even if it meant an overnighter.
So essentially you're after a service techie with no family life, a Masters in particle physics AND who can wield a spanner, for THAT much money? I queried. Oh yes, came the earnest reply.
I hope they found someone, but the guy from work and I fell about the place when we discussed it afterwards. I'm not particularly well-paid, but I manage to keep the hassle, grief and chew to manageable proportions.
Ironically, one of the benefits on offer was BUPA healthcare

This was fascinating!!! Thank you!!

 

[Rrunnach]

The discussion about hospital scanners brought to mind what I think was first generation Ultrasound scanners I was involved manufacturing for Edinburgh based Nuclear Enterprises. Majority of matl was al/al. The goalpost part where cable goes into, all al/al channel section, machine prepped and full welded. I must have done dozens of these. Bottom middle probe, the part which looks like a dial is installed, this was fabbed from 20 or 22 swg al/al. Minimum pene allowed so not to hinder components that fitted inside. Not easy when my plant was a BOC ADR 300, no pulse back in them days. American fridges were designed on the old ADR's

What was really interesting with this product was, parts made from mild steel sheet, matl was free issue from NE, and had low activity tests done to each sheet, much of this material came from salvaged steel from Scapa Flow pre WW2 ship wrecks, any materials post Nagasaki and Hiroshima nuclear bomb drops, are classed as reactive, as exposed to radiation fall out. Pre: materials not subjected to radiation from the nuclear bombs and protected by the water. Why: depending on ones illness, low level radioactive dies are injected into a patient, followed and traced using scanner, false readings can be picked up if scanner is built using post WW2 materials.

I may not have all the above correct, it is what I remember from the days UK use to manu interesting stuff. Oh, scanner use to be on show at Edinburgh museum, don't know if this is still the case??