GiantEye Advances High-Energy CT for Large-Scale Industrial Metrology
GiantEye, a globally unique high-energy CT system will go into operation in early 2027. The gantry system enables non-destructive 3D inspection and digitization of objects up to the size of a 20-foot sea freight container. Unlike its predecessor system, test objects are scanned in ‘road position’. Industrial customers can use the system for individual measurements or entire measurement campaigns and receive detailed 3D volume data with professional evaluation by the team of the Development Center for X-ray Technology.
GiantEye is a gantry-based high-energy (9 MeV) CT system whose design principle is modeled on clinical CT scanners – but on a scale capable of accommodating large industrial objects. In this setup, the test object remains stationary in its natural position, standing or lying, while the X-ray source and detector rotate together around the object on a ring-shaped structure. The technical design of the system is consistently geared toward large-volume industrial inspection.
With the newly created service offering around GiantEye technology, new possibilities for product development, quality assurance, and documentation are to be opened up for industry. The access to realistic digital data, made possible for the first time in this form by computed tomography, is crucial for the upcoming AI-driven disruption of product development.
Principle advantages of GiantEye:
Unique Inspection Capacity: Object sizes up to a 20-foot container and material penetration levels that no other industrially accessible CT system currently achieves.
Inspection in Original Position: No distortion due to repositioning, uprighting, or disassembly – fluids, moving components, and the effect of gravity remain in a near-operational state.
High Information Density per Scan: A single measurement typically answers multiple questions from different technical departments simultaneously – from geometry to material integrity to the relative position of individual components.
Expertise of the Development Center for X-ray Technology: The Fraunhofer Development Center for X-ray Technology has been operating high-energy CT for very large objects since 2013 and has built up unique methodological and evaluation expertise in this field.
Flexible Usage: Single measurements, multi-part measurement series along a lifecycle, or accompanying inspections for development and testing programs are equally possible.
Conceptually, GiantEye builds on a pilot system that was put into operation at the Rheinland-Pfalz Technical University (RPTU). There, the system is used for examining concrete columns under load conditions. This smaller sister system has validated the gantry principle in the high-energy range for industrial applications; GiantEye in Fürth transfers it to the scale required for vehicles and comparable large objects.
The practical added value results from several points: By remaining in an operationally realistic state, the significance of metrological evaluations is improved. Furthermore, the system enables high-energy testing for objects that fundamentally cannot be uprighted – such as filled containers, assembled large structures, or assemblies in which movable components must be in a defined position under the influence of gravity.
For more information: www.iis.fraunhofer.de
