Acuity Ultrasonics has been researching the internal quality of EHV, HV and MV cables since 2009. During this time, many thousands of kilometres of extruded cable have been scanned in factories across Europe.
Already operational at several major cable manufacturing sites Acuity Ultrasonics technology platforms have been proven to deliver quality assessment in cable production like no other.
Completely non-contact our UltraScreen and UltraProfilor platforms offer complete assessment in cable production so you can deliver the highest assured quality of cable manufacturing to your customers. Who wants to settle for second best?
Electronic records of every millimetre of cable produced can be stored, re-processed and re-examined to determine the optimum settings for feature detection. Every production line
has a unique signature which can be seen in the scans recorded.
Ultrasound technology is widely used in medical imaging of
course but the human body is relatively easy to scan – full of
water with a variety of different materials to reflect energy,
and in a static position so that multiple scans are possible to
determine the smallest features inside the body.
On the other hand, cross linked polyethylene absorbs ultrasound energy. A moving power cable being extruded
on the production line at more than one metre per minute
makes the detection of extremely small features normally difficult to extract from the high noise background. Acuity’s engineers spent many years in the sonar world, where detection of ‘foreign objects’ was vital to the submarine’s stealth operations and survival. Many of the techniques used
to detect and record such ‘abnormalities’ have been designed into our products where the lowest false alarm rates mean an amazingly accurate level of real detections and the greatest confidence in the system. Typically, a 10 day production run of HV cable might generate only one or two alarms during that period.
Acuity products aren’t just a plug and play solution for the ultimate in cable quality assurance. With real-time monitoring Acuity can offer both additional analysis support, continuous software updates with increased features and the big data storage support you need to ensure continuous cable monitoring is effective for the whole team.