The Boeing Company

William O Walters

Barry Allen Fetzer

Hien T Bui

Bruce S Howard

An apparatus for the rapid loading, launching and retrieval of foam pellets for tube cleaning. The apparatus uses a block configuration to allow gravity feed and rapid firing of pellets into tubes. The apparatus includes a hopper feeder attachment, which is self-adjusting during pellet jams.

Device to catch and retrieve foam pellets

A method of inspecting a radius area of composite parts with an ultrasonic inspection system, the system includes at least one ultrasonic probe, an upper sliding surface, a lower sliding surface, an adjustable guide rail, and an adjustable encoder wheel rotatably coupled to a rotary encoder, is provided. The method includes generating a high frequency sound wave using the probe including a radius of curvature extending from a center point, the sound wave travels partially through the part, adjusting the guide rail to align the center point of the probe with a center axis of a part corner portion, sliding the part through the inspection system to inspect the corner portion using the sound wave by rotating the wheel and rotary encoder such that the arcuate distance of the part is recorded, adjusting the wheel to avoid any apertures defined within the part, and processing the sound wave information.

Apparatus and method for nondestructive inspection of parts

A shunt is disposed in the current path of a device, e.g. a magnetic particle machine and an input voltage from the shunt is amplified and coupled to: a peak-hold circuit for developing a digital amperage readout; and, a pulse comparator circuit operative with clock, clock gate and counter circuits for developing pulse length readout.

Method and system for measuring width and amplitude of current pulse

A material hardness testing apparatus is provided, for use in quality control of production materials and parts, in which a pneumatically actuated indenter probe, incorporating an LVDT displacement transducer, is coupled by an analog-to-digital converter to a microprocessor-based computer that controls the cyclic actuation of the indentor probe, and processes indenter measurement data received from the LVDT transducer. The pneumatically actuated indenter probe includes pneumatic control means for providing independently adjustable control over the rates of probe impact and retraction in order to achieve consistent hardness measurements from cycle to cycle, together with relatively rapid displacement cycling of the indenter probe. The microprocessor-based computer incorporates a recalibration processor which automatically causes the testing apparatus to branch into a recalibration routine after a predetermined period of operation. During such recalibration, the apparatus semi-automatically tests and compares the measured hardness of one or more reference specimens with hardness values stored in memory and either disables the testing apparatus when the measured hardness deviates from the standard by a predetermined percentage amount, or stores in memory the difference between the measured hardness and the standard and enables the apparatus to continue with further testing. In each succeeding test, the apparatus automatically subtracts or adds the magnitude of the memorized difference to the raw measured hardness value to correct the hardness reading displayed by the apparatus.

Growing community of inventors

Seattle, WA, United States of America

William O Walters