Show notes
Jeremy Heinks from CICNDT (Composite Inspection and Consulting NDT) discusses how proper NDT programs can prevent costly failures and improve blade reliability. Drawing from his extensive experience, Heinks explains the challenges of implementing NDT in both onshore and offshore wind environments, emphasizing the importance of working with qualified experts to develop comprehensive inspection.
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Allen Hall: Welcome back to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast Spotlight. I'm your host, Allen Hall, along with my co host, Joel Saxum today we're joined by Jeremy Heinks a true veteran in the field of non destructive testing with over 25 years of experience spanning aerospace, renewables, and the space sectors. Jeremy is the owner of Composite Inspection and Consulting,
where he specializes in advanced materials, testing, and inspection methods. And from inspecting rocket components at SpaceX to developing comprehensive testing programs for wind turbine blades, Jeremy brings a unique perspective on quality assurance and testing
methodologies.
Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining light on wind energy's brightest innovators.
This is the Progress Powering Tomorrow.
Jeremy, welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. Thanks for having me. So you're a person we've been wanting to talk to for quite a while. And I'm glad you're on the podcast because NDT comes up all the time in our discussions when we're talking to operators, when we're talking to owners, they don't know much about it, and they're not even sure if they got NDT data, if it's the right kind of data to help them, and you have a ton of experience.
You've done aerospace, you worked at SpaceX, you've done all this cool NDT stuff. I want to know to start off with. What happens in the factory? What kind of NDT should be performed in the factory? And what are they trying to use it to detect?
Jeremy Heinks: Yeah. In the factory, NDT has come a long way over the past 20 years or so but we start out with the basics people don't understand like visual inspection is an NDT method and making sure that, that's done in a proper manner, it's regulated.
There are rules and regulations for proper visual inspection. And certifying people to that in the NDT realm, it's called VT here, Visual Technic but, uh, that's a first just doing proper visual inspection and looking for Gross defects that way. Another thing, that's another really basic one that we see in the plants is a tap test, right?
And that's another one. Tap test is a regulated NDT method. And typically that doesn't, people don't know that. It gets done incorrectly. 99 percent of the time your technicians that are doing tap tests have to pass certain certifications and regulations for hearing and all these types of different things.
And the same with the conditions for the area to do the tap test. It can't be a loud noisy area. You have to have, a certain amount of noise or certain, and then we get into a couple of the other basics. One is thermal testing or IR inspection. And when that's done in a plant, it's typically after the blade has been closed we've put the mold on top and we've closed up for the adhesive body to take place.
And the mold is then opened after curing cycle and then pulled out of the out of the mold and set up. So typically we would do a thermal inspection there to make sure that the adhesive is curing properly. Typically if maybe you have an adhesive machine. that has issues.
It would you'd see, areas that didn't get the initiator or other problems to where maybe you didn't get enough in there as a cooler area. A lot of different things go on there. And that's a highly, regulated inspection method as well. It can completely be done improperly in the plant as as we see often.
And another one that's been pushed pretty far since the 2000s is ultrasonic inspection. That started out with just a really basic single transducer with an A scan squiggly line on a screen. And you're just looking for a good bond between the laminate of the shell and a web and leading and trailing edge as well.
As far as bond lines go. You can also use that and thermography for looking for dry glass. But we don't typically see dry glass as much. That was a lot of the infusion technology has come a long way, so we don't typically see dry glass like we used to but and then, UT morphed into, using a linear array with multiple elements, doing, being able to do a wider area at a single pass again, all, mostly just aimed at bottom lines.
Over the years, we Also, a lot of the plants played with the root inspection because, it's an important factor, there's a lot going on in the root sections. But at the end of the day, it comes down to cycle time and how much time you want a plant wants to give to the NDT group if they have it.
So those are the basics that we see in the plant.
Joel Saxum: I think it's important to touch on this is you say, those are the basics, but anybody that's been close to NDT understands that NDT is nothing close to anything basic in general, right? It's very stringent. There's very, there's high regulation on it.
And the technology, like when you say, yes, the, an A scan, it's just a squiggly line on the screen. It takes a lot of education, a lot of knowledge, a lot of experience to, to really be able to tell what these things are. And all of that is driven by process. And one of the things to touch here to our listeners, Jeremy here, CIC NDT, of course, he's also been the person that worked in LM factories and built their NDT programs and has a ton of experience here.
Can you speak to what it looks like when someone wants to build a program or what that looks like? Cause you've been Oracle racing team, Tesla, fighter jets, all kinds of crazy stuff you told us off air. Tell us what that, that, the importance of that program and why someone would implement that.
Jeremy Heinks: Yeah, so the wind energy industry is still very much the wild west when it comes to that type of stuff. So it's really comes to what is the end user or the customer driving the manufacturer to do. So a lot of it comes down to that. The other thing is if the manufacturer just wants to take it upon themselves to build a better system.
Which we've seen in the past, but it typically, for whatever reason, doesn't seem to stick. A customer will have, a manufacturer will have a problem with a bomb mine. So they'll spend a bunch of money. We go in, we set up a full bomb mine inspection program for them, train inspectors get experience up, mentor them.
And then once the problem goes away, they seem to think, oh yeah, we beat that. The process is now fixed. We have no more problems. And then five years later, we go through the whole thing again. But yeah we've built systems for a few of the blade manufacturers and yeah, typically you're not going to go out and hire certified NDT technicians.
You'll get some, a group like my, like CIC or you'll hire a single level three. And they'll come in and build a system. And typically it'll just grab people from the floor and toss them in a room and say, you're our NET group now. And that's something on the aviation side, oil gas side that doesn't happen.
And that's, that makes you have to deal with a very large learning curve, right? So these guys the upside is if you're pulling them off a production line, they know the part. And that's. Coming from the naval aviation side, that was something that we were supposed to do too.
It's before I could even become an NDT technician in the Navy, I did five years working on aircraft as a, Hydraulics and structural mechanics. So I knew the parts. I knew the aircraft which just makes you a better inspector. Wow.
Allen Hall: All right. This is a little mind blowing here because it's really complicated.
I think that's one of the things about NDT that I always complain about is don't know how difficult it is and management doesn't tend to know doing an A scan is difficult. I. Did that in aerospace and was around a lot of people who were experts in it, and they could read things on that scope that I just didn't see.
And they, you're right, they also have to know what they're looking at first. You just can't get a scan, a trace, and go, Oh yeah, there's a defect here. That is not the case at all. That's fascinating. So are we starting to see more sort of automation in the factory? We, Joel and I have been to a couple of conferences.
Where they've talked about automating some NDT inspections just for throughput, to keep the rate of deliveries up. Is that where we're going to go in the factory, or is it still really going to be a manual process because of the difficulties with it?
Jeremy Heinks: That's where we need to go. There's been a few manufacturers that have tossed a ton of money at this problem.
The problem being that they threw the money at an automation company that did not know NDT. So they came at it with a manufacturing automation set of mind, mindset. And it, every time I've seen it it failed pretty spectacularly with, they come up with a solution, but it was just, wasn't practical.
And you end up with a million and a half dollar piece of equipment sitting on a shelf or in a corner of your factory, just getting, collecting dust or being scavenged off of. Tip, this is where it's going.