On the reliability of quantitative evaluation of penetrant systems quality

The market of the penetrant systems is increasing every year. A sensitivity of the penetrant systems is one of the main criteria for a customer. Therefore the importance of reliable result of the determination of penetrant systems sensitivity is increasing as well. It was established in our experiments that repeating the procedure of type testing in accordance with ISO EN 3452-2, in many cases one can obtain rather variable results for the sensitivity level. The goal of our investigations was to establish the principal factors, influencing the result of penetrant system type testing. Our results show that the values of the duration of such penetrant inspection technological stages as penetrant and developer applications may be considerably lower than the values recommended by ISO EN 3452-2 for the type testing. At the same time the character of the procedure's realization of excess penetrant removal and developer application strongly influences upon the type testing results. Some recommendations for obtaining more reliable results of the determination of penetrant system sensitivity are worked out and proposed. (Author)