Most industrial CT decisions start the same way: someone needs to see inside a part without cutting it open, and asks which scanner to buy. On its own that question has no answer, because the systems sold as industrial CT are built around different constraints. A disappointing purchase is rarely a bad machine, just a good machine bought for a different workflow.
Merkel Technologies represents Lumafield, RX Solutions and Radalytica in Israel, and Neoscan benchtop micro-CT is also available from us. Carrying four lines means there is no default answer to sell, and the choice narrows in a predictable order.
Start with the part, not the scanner
Three questions do most of the filtering. Physical size comes first, which is not the same question as whether the part can reach a machine at all. Then the smallest feature that must be visible: a void in a casting, a crack in a weld, a solder joint. Then volume: one failure investigation a week is a different problem from every part coming off a line.
A fourth question is easy to skip: is the output an image an engineer interprets, or a traceable dimension that has to hold up in a report? Metrology systems are specified differently from defect-detection systems. Material matters too: a source that images a polymer housing may not penetrate a steel casting of the same size.
Throughput decides more than any single specification
The most common mistake is treating CT as a laboratory technique when the real requirement is production inspection. Scanning a few samples a week and inspecting hundreds of parts off a line are different problems, and a system built for one fits the other badly.
Lumafield is built for the second case. A conveyor-integrated configuration scans at production rate, so internal quality is checked continuously instead of on samples pulled for destructive testing. Analysis runs in the cloud, so results reach engineers who never touch the scanner. It also takes the largest parts here, up to 1000 mm long and 600 mm in diameter.
When resolution and configurability matter more than volume
Where detail matters more than volume, the argument reverses. RX Solutions builds laboratory CT systems where configurability is the point. One instrument can carry up to two X-ray sources and two detectors: a microfocus tube for routine work with a nanofocus tube for the finest detail, and a flat panel for coverage with an sCMOS detector for a region of interest inside a larger part.
The EasyTom line covers three part sizes, up to large objects of 720 mm. A 450 kV configuration penetrates denser and thicker material than a standard microfocus source reaches, often the deciding factor with metal castings. Metrology configurations produce a traceable dimension rather than an image alone. That 720 mm ceiling is also the honest dividing line: above it, Lumafield; below it, throughput against configurability.
When the part cannot come to the scanner
Cabinet systems assume the object can go inside a box. Plenty of valuable inspection work fails that assumption: an installed aircraft wing, a large bonded panel, a component already fitted into an assembly. In a selection process this behaves as a gate rather than a specification: no amount of chamber volume answers it.
In Radalytica's RadalyX a robot arm carries the source and detector around the object, so the limit becomes robot reach rather than chamber volume. If the part fits in a cabinet, it belongs in one.
When every sample fits in your hand
If everything you scan is small, as bone specimens, tablets, electronics and battery cells usually are, a large system is capacity you pay for and never use. That is what benchtop micro-CT is built for. The Neoscan N80, at the top of that line, reaches 2 microns true low-contrast resolution. Two details matter as much as that figure: scan times as short as 15 minutes for some samples, and an optional 24-position changer that runs a batch unattended.
Where industrial CT is the wrong tool
This is the part vendor comparisons leave out, and it saves more money than any specification table. CT resolves structure, not composition. It shows where material is and is not, and separates materials only as far as they attenuate X-rays differently. If the question is which alloy this is, what a contaminant is made of, or how thick a coating is, that is a question for micro-XRF.
Composites, adhesive bonds and delamination are the second boundary. CT can image them, but it is often the slow and expensive route to the answer. XARION's optical microphone generates and detects ultrasound with light, with no coupling gel and no water bath, and for delamination, porosity and disbonds it is frequently the better first instrument. It is ultrasound, not X-ray, and produces no 3D volume to slice through.
Two boundaries are less obvious. Where the requirement is external geometry, full-surface 3D scanning measures a part in well under a minute, at sizes far beyond any CT chamber. What it cannot do is see inside. And to catch a bearing before it fails, no imaging system helps; that is continuous acoustic monitoring of a running machine, not inspection of a part.
The comparison worth doing is on your own parts
Specifications rarely settle this. What settles it is a scan of your own geometry, in your own material, looking for the defect you care about, on the two or three systems still standing. Sample data from another industry is interesting. A scan of your part is evidence.
The rest belongs to the years after installation: who runs the system, who trains new users, how fast a service call is answered. We arrange scans on customer parts before purchase, and installation, training and service afterwards. We would rather say which of these four fits, including when none of them does, than sell the largest system in the range.