Every cabinet inspection system makes the same assumption: that you can put the object inside a box. A great deal of the most valuable inspection work fails that assumption. An installed aircraft wing, a large bonded structure, a component already fitted into an assembly — none of them are going into an enclosure, and historically that meant they were not getting a CT inspection.
Inverting the geometry
Radalytica's RadalyX turns the arrangement inside out. Instead of moving the object through a fixed source and detector, a robot arm carries the X-ray source and a photon-counting detector around the object itself. There is no enclosure, so the constraint becomes robot reach rather than chamber volume, and the inspection travels to the part rather than the reverse.
The detector matters as much as the robot: photon counting registers individual X-ray photons rather than integrating a signal on a flat panel, which is what makes the approach viable without the geometry a cabinet provides.
Where it earns its place
- Large and installed structures — inspected where they stand, an installed aircraft wing being the standard example
- Aerospace and defence NDT — composite structures, bonded assemblies and large panels examined for internal defects
- On-site inspection — removing the logistics, cost and risk of shipping a large or safety-critical part to a laboratory
- Tomosynthesis and multimodal imaging — more than one imaging mode over the same robotic scan path
The system is used by organisations including Boeing, Blue Origin and CERN — a reasonable indication of where open-geometry inspection is genuinely necessary rather than merely convenient.
The logistics argument
The technical case is usually secondary to a practical one. Sending a large structure to an external laboratory means crating it, insuring it, transporting it, waiting, and accepting that it is out of service throughout. For anything installed, that also means removing it — often the most expensive and highest-risk step in the whole process.
Inspection that arrives at the part removes that chain entirely.
What it does not replace
RadalyX complements cabinet CT rather than replacing it. For small parts at the highest resolution, a cabinet system remains the right tool, and nothing about open geometry changes that. The two answer different questions: cabinets do detail on things you can carry, RadalyX does things you cannot.
It is also X-ray, not ultrasound. For rapid large-area screening of composite panels for delamination and disbonds, contactless laser ultrasound is often the faster route.
Assessing it for your work
The usual qualifying question is simple: is there something you would inspect if only you could get it into a machine? If the answer is yes, this is the category to look at. Merkel Technologies represents Radalytica in Israel — talk to us about what you are trying to inspect.