A sound system: General Industry Coverage

One of the greatest needs for the parts manufacturing industry, according to RTE Akustik + Prüftechnik GmbH, is for an automated, reliable and cost-effective component-testing system that assures high-quality products. That system must also be able to adapt to different production volumes and product diversity.

To meet that challenge, the company introduced SonicTC, a scalable system that provides noise and vibration testing; nondestructive acoustic materials testing, or acoustic resonant testing; and eigenfrequency measurement of assemblies and components during production and development.

“All workpieces that are excited from external sources vibrate in their eigenfrequencies, or natural frequencies,” said RTE General Manager Ingolf Hertlin. “The eigenfrequencies represent the mechan- ical properties and stiffness of the part.”

Courtesy of RTE Akustik + Prüftechnik

RTE’s SonicTC system provides distributed component testing with central administration.

He pointed out that while acoustic testing of parts such as motors and gears is primarily performed subjectively and sonic crack testing is typically a manual process, SonicTC has the basic technology to conduct these tests objectively and automatically.