J A N U A R Y 2 0 2 0 • M A T E R I A L S E V A L U A T I O N 59 Advanced Test Equipment Corp. and Narda Safety Test Solutions Announce Agreement Advanced Test Equipment Corp. (ATEC), headquartered in San Diego, California, has announced a new agreement was reached and contracts executed between L3 Harris’s Narda STS group and ATEC, making ATEC the North American distrib- utor and the only authorized service center for calibration and repair of Narda STS and PMM equipment. ATEC is a provider of test equipment rentals, sales, and calibrations, providing companies with equipment that meets all types of testing and monitoring requirements. ATEC’s lab is A2LA ISO 17025:2017 accredited to provide both calibration and repair of Narda equipment. Baker Hughes Changes Name Baker Hughes, a GE Company, headquar- tered in Houston, Texas, to which Inspection Technologies, a radiographic, ultrasonic, eddy current inspection company, belongs, has officially changed its name solely to Baker Hughes. CorrosionRADAR Secures £1m ($1.29 million) for CUI Technology Development CorrosionRADAR, which supplies moni- toring technology for corrosion under insulation (CUI), has secured a £1m ($1.29 million) investment from the MEIF Proof of Concept & Early Stage Fund, which is managed by Mercia and part of the Midlands Engine Investment Fund, with additional funds from Mercia and private investors, alongside grants from the Government’s Innovate UK and the Oil and Gas Technology Centre. A spin-out from Cranfield University, CorrosionRADAR’s patented system enables the move away from manual inspections to automated monitoring, and from reactive to predictive corrosion management. Earlier detection aides with corrosion prevention, lowering costs and risk. Permanently embedded sensors on the surface of the asset are used to contin- uously monitor its condition and detect problem areas, along with advanced analytics and artificial intelligence to predict where faults are likely to occur. The annual global cost of corrosion is estimated at over £2 trillion ($2.63 trillion) by the worldwide corrosion authority NACE. NDT Solutions to Partner with Invert Robotics NDT Solutions, a long-established US aerospace nondestructive testing (NDT) service group, has teamed with Invert Robotics from New Zealand in a joint venture aimed to change the process of aircraft inspection at the in-service, OEM, and maintenance levels. Invert’s remotely controlled robot employs a patented suction mechanism that adheres and traverses a range of aircraft surfaces made of aluminum and carbon- or glass-fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP/GFRP). This unique process allows the technician to scan both the upper as well as the lower fuselage/wing surfaces from the remote location in both wet and dry environments. NDT Solutions will extend the capabilities of the robot by adding NDT functionality such as ultra- sound, eddy current, and thermal/infrared testing and will continue research on other inspection modalities. TPC Wire & Cable Acquires Pittsburgh Wire and Cable TPC Wire & Cable Corp. (TPC) announced that it has completed the purchase of Pittsburgh Wire and Cable (PWC) Inc. located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. PWC is a value-add stocking distributor of high-end electrical solutions for the video inspection, mining, and rail indus- tries. This acquisition allows TPC to further penetrate new end-user markets and expand on its current portfolio of high-performance wire and cable solutions. w INDUSTRY news From left: ATEC Business Development Manager Gabe Alcala, ATEC President James Berg, Narda STS Managing Director Martin Meisenburg, Narda STS Director of Production Benjamin Losch, and Narda STS Instrument Sales Manager Gerry Spanelli.