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Weight and heat management of performance aluminum alloy pistons leads to complex piston designs that can be difficult to manufacture compared to conventional pistons. In order to verify the casting quality and detect pores, cracks and other defects, the use of X-ray testing methods is inevitable. While automatic 2D X-ray image processing has become a standard quality control method for simple cast parts, 3D volume processing is not yet widely used. The main reason is usually not the cost difference between 2D and 3D X-ray, but rather the processing time required for image acquisition. Compared to often only a few images required to cover a part using 2D X-ray images, a CT reconstruction requires a large number of images to minimize reconstruction artifacts.

The results of automatic X-ray inspection of cast parts rely heavily on the quality of the imaging components. Flat panel detectors suffer from a number of flaws, the most serious being long-term stability and image quality. This paper presents a new X-ray detector design which can increase defect detection quality, cost efficiency and long term stability of an industrial automatic X-ray inspection system.