Patent ID: 9630248
Date: 2017-04-25
CPC Classifications: B22F,B23K,C22C,F23R,G01N

Claim:
1. A method of manufacturing an article by hot pressing and ultrasonically inspecting the article comprising the steps of:— (a) forming a canister, (b) filling the canister with powder material, filling the canister with a plurality of components or filling the canister with powder material and at least one component, (c) evacuating the canister, (d) sealing the evacuated canister, (e) applying heat and pressure to the canister to consolidate and diffusion bond the powder material together to form the article, to diffusion bond the components together to form the article or to consolidate the powder material and diffusion bond the powder material and the at least one component together to form the article, (f) ultrasonically inspecting the article within the canister by moving at least one ultrasonic transducer over the whole of an external surface of the canister, (g) determining the position of an interface between the article and the canister at each position on the external surface of the canister, (h) determining if there are any defects within the article, (i) determining the thickness of the canister at each position on the surface of the canister, (j) removing the canister from the article by machining the canister using a machine tool, and (k) controlling the movement of the machine tool over the canister such that at each position of the canister the machine tool removes the determined thickness of the canister for the corresponding position on the external surface of the canister.