Method for nondestructive testing of pipes

The invention relates to a process for the destruction-free testing of metallic pipes, in particular seamlessly produced steel pipes, in which method the entire length of the pipe is scanned following the circumference precisely and in this case, in addition to the wall thickness (WD) and the external diameter (Da) being determined, the inner and outer surfaces of the pipe are examined for faults, the faults determined in this process are compared with a predefined permissible reference fault depth RFT (RFT=fault threshold of×% of the nominal wall thickness), the pipes are sent to reworking means if the fault threshold is exceeded, and a requisite minimum wall thickness (WDmin) has to be present in the reworked region after the processing has been carried out. For this purpose, the invention provides for the pipes containing faults to be released for reworking only when the determined geometrical parameters have been correlated with one another beforehand in an evaluation step, and the following conditions are met: WD-RFT>WDmin for faults on the inner and outer sides of the pipe and Da-RFT>Da min for faults on the outer side of the pipe.