Nondestructive testing

So that's the second business.

Third business is NDT.

And that in collaboration with the commit, and a Comet Exelon, and we are thinking of even building some of the x-ray systems in India also, that is still in discussion mode.

At the same time, my team is also encouraging me to start the business for doing a fixture house in India.

Welcome to Chat NDT with AS&T.

I'm content strategist Haley Cowens.

As aerospace and defense parts grow more complex, so do the challenges of inspecting them.

So because of your injury, then you move into being a certified welding instructor.

How many years do you do that? And then how do you get into the non-destructive NDT side? So in

1993, so I'd been doing QC for about three years.

1993, I go back to Endicott, and they're building a new bridge on the causeway.

And they were doing a lot down here.

Where you're working used to be a marathon facility.

And we had, this company had a lot of the NDT inspection in that area.

So on my two weeks off, I worked as a NDT and doing radiography and ultrasonics and all the other NDT methods.

And on an expectant mother, they do ultrasound to check on the baby to make sure it's safe.

So I always try to convey that non-destructive testing is keeping the world safer and that every time you cross a bridge, you get on an airplane, you know, NDT is there.

So I always like to say that non-destructive testing is probably one of the most important professions that most people have never heard of.

Yeah, definitely.

Yeah, yeah,

for sure.

So I know the industry is always changing, but from your perspective, what are the biggest challenges facing the NDT profession today? I

think the biggest challenge that we're facing is a workforce shortage.

What the industry really needs here is a way of examining rails proactively, not dealing with reports reactively, and that includes looking beneath a surface that might appear perfectly sound.

all of which brings us back to the field of non-destructive testing, NDT.

It would be great.

It would be absolutely fantastic to be able to just go out and cut out a section of rail at a time, cut it open, look inside of it, and make sure there's no flaws or tiny cracks appearing.

Esso were building, um, or Imperial oil.

They were building a local refinery and I got the contract for all of the NDT.

that's doing baseline ultrasonic thickness readings on their pressure vessels and piping.

That was huge.

Welcome to Chat NDT with ASNT.

I'm content strategist Haley Cowens.

In this episode, we're focusing on the future of digital imaging in NDT and the people who are building that future right now.

I sat down with two speakers at ASNT 2025 to pick their brains about the trends they're seeing in digital imaging.

They had very different paths to their NDT careers, but they shared their excitement about the science and technology they get to work with, including computed tomography, digital detector arrays, automatic defect recognition, and AI's growing role in inspection.

So whether you came up through traditional NDT or you're arriving from somewhere completely unexpected, there's a place for you in the future of this industry.

Let's get into it.

My name is Shane Sunken.

Do you have them go through your procedure and make sure that they understand it?

Uh, you mean contractors for, uh, NDT?

Uh, yeah.

Yes.

A- again, I was blessed and privileged to have that kind of rotation training.

I have the privilege of wearing many hats.

So I, I worked with the inspection, with failure analysis, with the MTC material testing certificates review, with the contract development, with NDT planning, and then RBI and, and corrosion.

That was, I would say, the, the, the f- the final, uh, stage in my rotation.