Spark Testing

Knowing exactly what your pipe is made of, and the exact percentage of those elements, can be critical.

Spark Testing, or Optical Emission Spectroscopy, is the process Pro Integrity NDT® uses to identify the elemental properties of metal.

We conduct tests in an envelope of argon while our instruments measure the visible spectrum of light emitted by minute quantities of the metal that are “burned” by an electric spark.

Spark Testing produces quick, reliable and reproducible analysis. It can analyze a wide variety of elements, including steel, cast iron and high alloyed steels, non-ferrous metals and their alloys, wrought alloys, casting alloys, bronze, brass, copper, nickel, magnesium, zinc and many others.

It offers a good limit of detection for most materials – generally less than 50ppm, with 10ppm detection limits more typical.

Benefits this method are:

• The carbon content of stainless or low alloy steels can be measured
• It can differentiate between 304/316 and 304L/316L Stainless
• The Ferrite equivalent of steel can be calculated if magnetic method fails.
• Provides input data to Carbon Equivalency calculation.