An Apparatus for the Automated Nondestructive Testing of Electroexplosive Devices Using the Electrothermal Transient Technique

An electroexplosive-device (EED) tester was developed by Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) for the U.S. Army Munitions and Chemical Command under contract number DAAK10-84-C-0206. The tester was designed to nondestructively evaluate (NDE) eight different electrothermal devices at production rates up to 45 parts per minute. The tester automatically removes the device to be tested from an input tray, places it in a test fixture, performs an electrothermal transient test, and places the device into an accept/output tray or a reject bin, depending on the quantitative decision made by an analysis computer. The entire NDE is done without hazard to the operator in a self-contained, purged enclosure. The accept/reject criteria are operator-selectable and are applied through use of Boolean statements. Test results and measurement accuracy are designed to be equal to those achieved using laboratory instrumentation.