Ultrasonic Transducers for NDT

[Emil09]

Anybody familiar with these things?

**broken link removed**

They seem to usually be used in systems specially designed to operate them but I'm interested in trying to use one in a lab for experimental purposes with a signal generator and a spectrum analyzer. Possible?

 

[Sceadwian]

Sure it's possible, if you have a decent analyzer, interpreting the results is a rather advanced topic though. The picture is indistinct, can you provide the model number of the module pictured?

 

[Emil09]

Sure it's possible, if you have a decent analyzer, interpreting the results is a rather advanced topic though. The picture is indistinct, can you provide the model number of the module pictured?

I don't actually have that model, I just wanted to provide a photo of the general type of transducer that I was referring to so that people wouldn't confuse it with a range finder or something like that. The little bit of information I do have on that particular transducer is the following:

ULTRASONIC ANGLE BEAM TEST PROBE
- 4MHz, 8X9 mm, 45 / 60 / 70 DEGREE 1 X EACH
- SUBVIS CONNECTOR
- INDEX POINT 15 mm
- GOOD RESOLUTION AND SENSITIVITY
- BANDWIDTH: 50% AT -6dB

I'm in the process of determining the type of transducer I should purchase. Quite a few to choose from as you can see from one of the sites I've been browsing:

NDT Supply - Nondestructive Testing Equipment & Supplies

They seem to range in price from about $150 to $300 and in frequency from about 1 MHz to 5 MHz. Based on what I've been reading, I will need some kind of high voltage "pulser/receiver" to operate the transducer. One of the transducers I was looking at requires a pulse voltage of 300 v (don't know if that's peak or peak-to-peak). I'm pretty sure the signal generator in my lab can't handle 300 volt pulses.

For those who don't know, this is the basic idea behind what I'm interested in:
**broken link removed**

 

[Sceadwian]

Wow, I had no idea the frequencies they used were so high, I'm guessing the power output is pretty low so a transformer should work fine to step up the voltage from the signal generator. You're probably going to want more control though, you probably need to generate a single pulse, or short trains easy enough for a micro controller, just use a push/pull driver to step up the current and feed that into a transformer.