How CICNDT Qualifies Inspectors for Complex Blade Scans

Jeremy Heinks, founder and CEO of CICNDT, joins to discuss the inspector shortage, Level III oversight, blade samples, drone thermal limits, and IEC updates. The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech, creators of the StrikeTape Ultra LPS retrofit. Subscribe to Uptime’s Substack newsletter. And check out Rosemary’s "Engineering with Rosie" Youtube channel. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Episode Transcript Allen Hall: A lot is happening in your world. And in our world, too, as lightning protection people, because we are all dealing with damage to composite structures and wind turbine blades. Over the last couple of months, there have been some really complex problems in the field. And what I am seeing, and maybe you're seeing the same thing, is that some of the technicians out there trying to scan blades are just not qualified to do some of these complicated inspections. Blades are getting very complex now, with carbon in them and all the bonding issues. Are you seeing something similar from where you sit?Jeremy Heinks: It's not just service. It's at the supplier level, and it's at the OEM level, where they're trying to do something, but it's hard to come by the right people and make sure you're following a standard of sorts. But yeah, we're seeing that there's a genuine lack of properly qualified and certified people doing the work.Allen Hall: Is that a training issue, or just because there's so much demand for that expertise?Jeremy Heinks: A little bit of everything. Wind, even though it's been around for a while, is still relatively new to a proper inspection system. So having the right training in place, not getting taken advantage of by training centers, and having training that's actually focused on what we use for day-to-day inspection of blades is one thing.The other side of it is there's a global shortage of NDT technicians. It's just like any of the other trades that are really in demand. If anybody wants to get into something and have, not an easy life at work, but a decent chance at success and making a decent amount of money, then NDT is definitely the way to go, because there are huge shortages. Aviation and space programs are booming right now, and they're all looking for technicians.Allen Hall: Yeah, I've seen a lot of requests out there, particularly from defense companies that are building complex composite structures, and the job postings for NDT personnel. And they're paying really good money right now to find those people.Jeremy Heinks: Oh, absolutely. We just got a request from one of the big names here in the US for 86 technicians. And I'm like, there's no such thing as 86 technicians out there.Allen Hall: Yeah.Jeremy Heinks: You'll get one or two here and there, but there's just not that many available at the moment.Allen Hall: Well, back in the blade world, we're kind of wrapping up the blade season this time of year, and it gets a little bit heavy as everybody realizes, oh, I have some damage I didn't see before. A lot of drone inspections are happening, which then draw you in on NDT. As an operator, what are people to do here? I hear a lot of complaints that it's really hard to find somebody who knows what they're doing. I always point them to CIC and tell them to call you and get started there. But what should they be doing, and what should they be looking for when they have complex composite problems?Jeremy Heinks: Like you say, a lot more people are bringing inspection companies in, which is great, and we need to see that. But once you've made the decision that you need NDT, you've got to make sure you're getting what you pay for and the quality of service you expect to receive.So typically there are some questions you want to ask. Do you have a Level III in the method of inspection who is going to oversee everything from education to certification and qualification? And if they have Level IIIs, how do they take care of their technicians in the field? Are they qualified and certified? Do they log their hours? They have to have this whole structure around keeping up these standards. And this is why NDT technicians and NDT inspection are so expensive compared to a regular field tech. The repair guys are expensive too. They pull a lot of money because they're highly skilled. Same thing on the NDT side. You're working with a very small group of people who have the skill set and keep up with the training and certification. So you want to make sure they have the proper Level III, and you want to make sure their technicians are properly trained and certified.You also want to know their equipment and their application, so their techniques for the inspection. Let's say you have a root inspection or a bond inspection. They need to have something to show you that says, this is our application technique for that specific inspection, if there is one. A lot of times, like with lightning strikes, there isn't really anything that's perfected. Even though we've done a lot of work on the aviation side, bringing that over to wind is a whole other animal. But that's part of the process. You do your R&D in-house. We do that here at our lab, where we get samples from the customer if we're lucky enough, or we have something from different sources, and we perfect the inspection method and the technique, and that gets written into a work instruction. That way you have something to show the customer, and they can feel comfortable with the results you're going to give them.Allen Hall: So having a plan before they get on site, which doesn't always happen.Jeremy Heinks: And it's tough, right? Because a lot of times these blades are older, or the OEM [inaudible], so you don't have samples lying around. Then you've got to figure out what this blade type is similar to, and hopefully we have samples. We have a bunch of different samples in-house that we go to for different blade types, different laminate stacks, different bond line setups, different sections. And unfortunately, with the number of blades that are failing or getting repowered, there are a lot of places you can go to get these samples nowadays. But when you're buying a brand-new blade from the manufacturer, it wouldn't hurt to see if they can make you some samples and put them in storage, just in case.Allen Hall: Right. And that world is so wrapped around the actual construction. Even if you had a set of drawings, it doesn't really help you too much. You need an actual sample to see what's happening deep inside, particularly on really thick composite parts, like root bushing issues or root inserts. Those are complex areas because you have metal, epoxies, resins, and composites. Having a section of that at least gives you a chance to see where defects lie and to bring the right tools to site, which is my big complaint. When I see technicians arrive with the wrong tools, I think, what are we doing? It almost should be standard practice in the NDT world to at least have some cross-sections.Jeremy Heinks: Right. Blades are extremely complex, even compared to the things we see in the aviation world, because you've got these really different materials coming together. In aviation, you typically have a composite structure where everything is going to be kind of the same. In a root section, you have steel bushings, and some of them have protrusions. There's a whole bunch of different material types stuck in a small area, and that makes it extremely difficult. Even bond lines and different web types, where you have PET core versus a regular foam or balsa, all those things throw off your inspection completely. We typically use ultrasound, and ultrasound will react differently to all those materials.So when you scan across the bond line, or if you're using thermal or something else, the energy is going to transfer and reflect differently with each of those materials. If you don't have a representative sample, it's really hard to know what you're getting yourself into as an inspector. And that's where the Level III support comes in.We learn a lot of stuff in the field. Unfortunately, we're reactionary. We'll go out there, they'll say, hey, start scanning, and we have to get that raw data back to our Level IIIs to look at and say, all right, this is what's going on with the sound as it penetrates the part, and these are the materials that are in there. Then we use our experience, because we've got multiple guys who have been doing this for 10, 15, 20-plus years. We know what's out there and what we've seen before, and we can make adjustments so the inspection is successful.Allen Hall: So what happens when you have three or more manufacturers of the same blade? When you show up on a site, particularly in the US, you will have that. GE is a good example: LM, TPI, and MFG. So we have three different manufacturers. Plus, LM may have different factories producing the same blade. Those blades are not identical in terms of their construction and materials. Does that mean we need a TPI cross-section, an MFG cross-section, and an LM cross-section to really understand what's happening inside?Jeremy Heinks: At the end of the day, it would be perfect to have those, because there's a lot of difference. The manufacturers' molds have different fitments, or their material suppliers are different, so you're getting different things. The internal geometry of the part will be different, not just the actual shape. And the material velocities will be different because there's a different resin supplier, a different adhesive supplier, different everything. All that stuff does make a difference, and it would be better to have those things. But unfortunately, you probably couldn't get something like that from everybody.Allen Hall: Well, that's what a Level III is there for, to sort of determine, this doesn't look quite right. Maybe it's a different resin system than we've seen before,...