FORM 2
The Patent Act 1970
(39 of 1970)
&
The Patent Rules, 2005

COMPLETE SPECIFICATION
(SEE SECTION 10 AND RULE 13)

TITLE OF THE INVENTION
“SPIRAL MOTION SYSTEM FOR ULTRASONIC TESTING OF ROUND STOCK MATERIALS ”
APPLICANT:
Name : M/S. Fallon Ultrasonics (India) Pvt. Ltd.
Nationality : INDIAN COMPANY
Address : No.6-3-788/36&37, Durganagar, Ameerpet, Hyderabad-500016, Andhra Pradesh

The following specification particularly describes and ascertains the nature of this invention and the manner in which it is to be performed:-

Technical Field of the Invention
The present invention pertains to an apparatus and method for ultrasonic testing of round stock such as rods, pipe or tubing and more particularly to apparatus and method for effectively conducting accurate ultrasonic testing and inspection of such material.
Background of the Invention
Various means exist for handling the materials to be tested, which vary in diameter and in length, for transporting the materials through the water tank bearing the ultrasonic testing head and for supporting the ultrasonic testing head in relation to the work being inspected. All of the existing systems and arrangements possess certain disadvantages which reduce the productivity of the inspector during the course of a shift. It is of course to be appreciated that the objective of conducting an inspection is to permit the inspector to spend as much time as possible actually performing an inspecting operation and is only required to perform the barest minimum in terms of materials handling of material to be inspected. Furthermore, the requirement of protecting the surface of the work being inspected is highly important since the operation is not successful if it succeeds in generating more scars on the material undergoing tests than it detects in terms of pre-existing defects.
In another known method, the ultrasonic testing head is located on a carriage wherein to conduct the rotation and forward movement of the test object is performed using motor-based rollers which are angled such that required spiral motion is given to the test object. The axis of rollers can be adjusted for giving the pitch, which enables forward movement as rollers rotate. Optimal orientation of the testing head, however, is not possible in this case.
In light of the aforementioned systems and methods, there clearly exists a need for a spiral motion system for ultrasonic testing of round stock materials which has enhanced effectiveness and also reliability of tube testing process.

Brief Summary of the Invention
In accordance with teachings of the present disclosure, a spiral motion system for ultrasonic testing of round stock materials is disclosed.
The invention is directed to the ultrasonic testing of round stock such as tubing, pipe, and rod wherein the arrangement comprising a base frame; a first carriage means; a second carriage means; four drive heads of which two on each side of the work piece to rotate and feed the work piece through; a work piece rotation unit; a work piece linear conveyance unit; an immersion tank having ultrasonic sensors.
According to an exemplary aspect of the invention, wherein the base frame comprises at least one steel fabricated frame to support the electrical cabinets, lift table and drive heads; four guide rods and eight guide bushings; two jack screws tied together with a jack shaft and one servo motor to lift the table and the servo motor has a encoder to feed back position; one lift table to support the immersion tank and the drive heads.
According to an exemplary aspect of the invention, the arrangement as defined above wherein the base frame is defined to have lift mechanism to position the immersion tank in level with in-feed.
According to an exemplary aspect of the invention, the arrangement as defined above, wherein the said four drive heads comprise at least two bottom idler rollers to support the work piece; wherein one top drive roller is mounted off a pivot arm wherein the arm will be raised and lowered by an air cylinder and the drive roller is driven by a timing belt and servo motor; the assembly can be mounted off a base plate which pivots the assembly for correct angle to feed the work piece at the correct helix.
According to an exemplary aspect of the invention, the drive heads angle control comprises at least one link arm to connect each of the drive heads pivot plates and at least one ball screw driven with a servo motor to control the pivot angle of the drive head assemblies with positional feed back. During the setup of the sensors the drive heads can be disengaged and the drive heads can be pivoted so that the work piece does not feed, but just support the work piece.
According to an exemplary aspect of the invention, wherein the tube linear conveyance runs on both sides of the testing stand along the roll in and roll out tables and the rollers assemblies / tube holding assemblies are present on either side of test stand and both these will in turn be mounted on fabricated structures with easy manual mechanisms for adjusting and locking the center distance between the two rollers and all the rollers will be aligned such that the centroid of all the rollers will match the tube central axis.
In accordance with the further teachings, the present invention discloses a spiral motion system for ultrasonic testing of round stock material aims at detecting and recording the manufacturing discontinuity in tubes/ rods. The main object of this invention is to enhance efficiency and accuracy of the inspection and to remove accessibility limitations.
According to the exemplary aspect of the invention, a spiral motion system for ultrasonic testing of round stock material, wherein the testing is done throughout the process, which is fast, automatic, accurate, reliable, and economical and does away with manual errors in testing and such round stock material are generally used in mission-critical applications like aerospace, nuclear power and the like. Hence, even minor manufacturing defects, which are not at all permitted, can be located easily and is not time consuming unlike conventional methods.
In order to provide a high level of capability, while maintaining a high data testing rate, a distributed, multiple processor configuration is used for the high speed portion of the system. The user interface comprises of a state of the art PC for user control, data storage, and report generation. Overall, the instant invention represents a true next-generation solution in the area of real-time non-destructive testing of round stock material, such as rod or tubing and other test pieces.
A more complete appreciation of the present invention and the scope thereof can be obtained from the accompanying drawings which are briefly summarized below and the following detailed description of the presently preferred embodiments.
Brief Description of the Drawings
Other objects and advantages of the present invention will become apparent to those skilled in the art upon reading the following detailed description of the preferred embodiments, in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, wherein like reference numerals have been used to designate like components, and wherein:
FIG. 1 depicts an overall view of the inspecting machine provided in accordance with the invention;
FIG. 2 depicts a front elevation of the inspecting machine provided in accordance with the invention;
Detailed Description of the Invention
The invention will now be described in more detail in reference to the drawing in which FIG. 1 illustrates an overall view of the testing machine provided in accordance with the invention. In FIG. 1 illustrates apparatus for ultrasonically inspecting round stock material, such as rod or tubing quickly, economically and accurately. The apparatus 100 comprises a base frame 101; a first carriage means 106a, a second carriage means 106b; four drive heads 108,109, of which two on each side of the work piece to rotate and feed the work piece through ultrasonic testing water tank 107; a work piece linear conveyance unit (102, 103); an immersion tank 107 having ultrasonic sensors, wherein operation of the device is described as follows
Initially, the work piece 100 moves on the linear conveyance unit 102, where the edge passes through a pair of drive heads having rollers 104 which guide the work piece in forward direction as indicated in the Fig. 1, whereby the first carriage 106a as designated in the Fig.1 is positioned in far left end which is referred as start position. Further the edge of the work piece 100 is passed through a central opening in the chuck of the first carriage 106a and at the other end of chuck, a pair of proximity (other detection) sensors not shown in figure detect the work piece 100 wherein the gear of the gear motor 108a engages with a gear rack on base plate guides the carriage to operate in reverse direction and reaches the other end which is called homing position.
Further, the work piece 100 is clamped in the air chuck 109a and is rotated, where in the first carriage 106a further moves in forward direction pulling the said work piece whereby the edge of the work piece 100 enters the immersion tank 107 through a orifice on side of tank thereby the testing phase starts, after that the edge of object moves further coming out through another orifice. As shown in figure the second carriage 106b will be in forward direction which is termed as homing position wherein the edge of the work piece 100 enters the central opening of the chuck where it is clamped and rotated in synchronization with the first carriage 106a. The second carriage 106b operates forward with the help of gear motor 108b. As the first carriage 106a reaches its rack length end, the motion of the first carriage 106a stops and the chuck clamps releases the work piece 100, whereby the first carriage 106a moves back i.e. in reverse direction as indicated in the figure, while the second carriage 106b further continues to move in forward direction
As the second carriage 106b reaches its rack length end, the motion of the second carriage 106bstops and the air chuck 109b clamp releases the object, now the first carriage 106a chuck clamp grips the work piece 100 and rotates it and operates forward, drawing the work piece without any interruption of motion, by doing this both first carriage 106a and second carriage 106b operate in synchronization to give continuous rotation and forward spiral movement to the work piece. Finally, when the other end of the work piece passes through the first carriage 106a and reaches the end position where it stops and stays there until new operation starts and the second carriage 106b stops after the edge of the work piece passes through and moves to homing position.
By doing such operation, the spiral motion of the work piece continues without any interruption of speed in the rotary motion or in forward motion from the start to the end of the testing.
As the work piece 100 enters and moves through the immersion tank 107, the ultrasonic instrument sends electrical signals to sensors which convert this electrical signal into ultrasonic signals and transmits them. These ultrasonic signals penetrate into the material and if any anomalies/flaws such as holes, cracks, inclusions are present, the ultrasound is reflected and some of it returns back to sensor. Further, the sensor will sense this signal and convert it back to electrical signal and send them to instrument. The system has user interface analysis & display systems is employed (not shown) for the interpretation of returned signal. Here the sensor covers only part of surface at a time. Hence the motion system generally has spiral motion i.e. rotation and forward movement with a predetermined pitch (step) after each rotation.
In order to provide a high level of capability, while maintaining a high data testing rate, a distributed, multiple processor configuration is used for the high speed portion of the system and programmed to control and run each motor at particular RPM. The user interface consists of a state of the art PC for user control, data storage, and report generation. The display is used to control the operation of the system and consists of a set of functional menu screens. The menu screen is used by the operator in determining the descriptive properties/parameters associated with a particular anomaly that has been determined to be a flaw. Also for dimension measurements such as diameters, wall thickness, ovality, etc.
Further, in addition the workpiece can be rotated in one position at any speed for verification, wherein the system allows variable rotating and feed program with precision to test the product which is not possible in a conventional existing spiral rotating system. The system uses double rotating carriages which are in synchronization to move the workpiece smoothly with firm grip via the ultrasonic testing tank and the system has advantage of no slippages during rotation and maintains stability of testing product by means of reduction in vibration.
While embodiments of the invention have been illustrated and described, it is not intended that these embodiments illustrate and describe all possible forms of the invention. Rather, the words used in the specification are words of description rather than limitation, and it is understood that various changes may be made without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention.

CLAIMS
What is claimed is:
1. An apparatus for inspecting a work piece with ultrasound, which the apparatus comprises means for rotating around at least part of the work piece’s circumference whilst maintaining each device in proximity of the work piece
2. An Apparatus as claimed in claim 1 wherein said work piece is mounted to one or more carriage means which are in sync with each other and the rotating means is in part incorporated into the carriage to enable the rotation of the or each device about said work piece.
3. An apparatus as claimed in claim 1 wherein said work piece is configured to move through a central opening in the chuck of said carriage and at the other end one or more pair of proximity sensors are used to detect the work piece.
4. An apparatus as claimed in claim 1 where in said work piece is mounted to the base frame and engageable by a respective motor driven gear rod extending across the said apparatus base frame, the rotation of which causes each gear rack on the base plate guides and thereby causing continuous rotation and forward spiral movement of the said work piece
5. An apparatus as claimed in any claim 1 that is adapted in use such that said work piece can be fed through the apparatus lengthwise so that the or each device can be brought into proximity with the leading end of said work piece, and maintained in proximity of the work piece, until a trailing end of said work piece moves past the or each carriage.
6. An apparatus as claimed in claim 1 wherein said work piece is configured to pass through immersion tank wherein further the ultrasonic instrument sends electrical signals to sensors which convert this electrical signal into ultrasonic signals which penetrates into the material and if any anomalies/flaws such as holes, cracks, inclusions are present, the ultrasound is reflected and returns it back to sensor.
7. An apparatus as claimed in claim 1, wherein said sensor is used to sense the signal which is further integrated for interface analysis & display systems.
8. An apparatus as claimed in claim 1, wherein said work piece may be a rod, pipe or tubing.
9. An arrangement for ultrasonic defect testing of lengths of work piece comprising:
- a base frame in which two or more carriages can be supported and moved, each carriage supporting one or more ultrasonic transducers for positioning in proximity of the pipe;
- means for positioning a length of pipe in proximity with one of the carriages;
- wherein the means for positioning the work piece length comprises a work piece support for feeding the work piece into and supporting the work piece whilst in the arrangement, and a carriage moving means operable between each carriage and the support frame for moving a given carriage into proximity of a work piece in the work piece support.
10. An arrangement as claimed in claim 9 wherein the carriage moving means comprises the guide members, guide rollers, framework, drive motor and work piece extending across the base frame.

ABSTRACT
Apparatus and arrangement for inspecting a work piece with ultrasound, comprises a support frame in which two or more carriages can be supported and moved, each carriage is positioned in proximity of the work piece; wherein each gear rack on the base plate guides and thereby cause motion to the given workpiece (tube, rod) using the two carriages and moving and rotating the workpiece in synchronization, for conducting a superior platform for ultrasonic testing.