Patent ID: 7389692

Claim:
Apparatus for measuring physical properties of a test object using ultrasonic inspection techniques comprising: a pulse generator to generate an electrical pulse having predetermined characteristics; an ultrasonic wave generator, the ultrasonic wave generator receiving the electrical pulse from the pulse generator; the ultrasonic wave generator being configured to convert the electrical pulse to an ultrasonic wave and propagate the ultrasonic wave at an object, the ultrasonic wave generator being configured to receive a reflected ultrasonic wave from a test object and convert the reflected ultrasonic wave to an analog signal; a digital log amplifier for processing the analog signal comprising: at least one unattenuated processing path, each unattenuated processing path including amplifier means for amplifying the analog signal to a desired level and a converter means for digitally sampling the amplified analog signal to convert the analog signal to a digitized representation of the analog signal; at least one attenuated processing path, each attenuated processing path including attenuation means for attenuating the analog signal, amplifier means for amplifying the attenuated analog signal to a desired level and converter means for digitally sampling the amplified attenuated analog signal to form a digitized representation of the analog signal; a logic device receiving each digitized representation of the analog signal from both the at least one unattenuated and at least one attenuated signals, thereby receiving a plurality of digitized signals, the logic device comprising means for selecting one digitized signal of the plurality of digitized signals the selected digitized signal being the most linear and having the greatest amplitude of the plurality of digitized signals; storage means for storing a plurality of selected digitized signals; combining means for combining the stored plurality of digitized signals to form a continuous linear digital waveform; and display means for displaying the combined continuous linear digital waveform.