The seminar held for our customer - American company Gonzales & Sons (Miami, USA) in September 2019. Operating the devices for NDT of rail track UDS2-77, USR-01.

In September 2019, the specialists of OKOndt GROUP™ visited the USA participating in two events in a row. One of the events has become Railway Interchange-2019, the largest railway forum in North America, in which the representatives of our company participated as a member of REMSA. During this massive event that was attended by 8,500, our company demonstrated their innovative products for nondestructive testing of rails and rail welded joints.

Upon completion of the exhibition, the experts of OKOndt GROUP™ went to Miami where they held aneducational seminar on how to operate the ultrasonic single rail flaw detector UDS2-77 and the USR-01 kit for the rail welded joints testing that is composed of a scanning device, manual probes, and the Sonocon B ultrasonic flaw detector for Gonzales & Sons employees.

The Gonzales & Sons company have recently purchased the NDT equipment for rails from OKOndt GROUP™ and they invited our specialists-developers to carry out the training course that provides required knowledge and skills to use that equipment.

OKOndt GROUP™ experts decided to start with dwelling upon a theoretical basics, namely:

• operating principles and component parts of UDS2-77 and USR-01

• sounding patterns

• functional capabilities, including the types of defects that the equipment can detect.

Day 2 of the seminar was dedicated to practice, participants were taught how to work with the UDS2-77. To more clearly demonstrate the equipment the rail specimen with artificial flaws was used. The representatives of Gonzales & Sons were showed how to build a calibration curve and setup sensitivity of the probes.

As far as the device has several modes of information display, the seminar attendees were also familiarized with the types of test result presentation – the A-Scan and B-Scan.

After completion of a practice with UDS2-77, USR-01 theoretical part was touched upon.

The third day of the training was practicing the flaw detection with the USR-01 kit on the rail flawed specimen.

Bearing in mind that it is quite tough to catch all the peculiarities and fully handle a new technical equipment on first try, OKOndt GROUP™ specialists decided to conclude a seminar with revision of the studied material.

So, the Gonzales & Sons’ employees got one more opportunity to scope out the UDS2-77 single rail flaw detector operation, the flaw detection was performed on the track switch this time. Moreover, one more practical training on welded joint testing with the USR-01 was held. Besides that, the OKO engineers shown a program example for the test results analysis explaining how to work with the software of the devices.

The training was a success. The attendees were impressed with the capabilities of the equipment, its interface forethought due to which operating the devices becomes intuitive.

In only 3 day term, the representatives of Gonzales & Sons understood functionality of the flaw detectors at a level that allows to use them successfully for nondestructive testing of railways. 

OKOndt GROUP™ engineers promised to provide further consultations, if that will be required.