Lightweight construction is a crucial issue in the aircraft industry. Load-bearing components are also increasingly being manufactured from fibre-reinforced composites. The processing of the material - for example, carbon - and the associated quality control is a challenge. An Airbus plane has innumerable boreholes. The visual inspection has so far been limited to the entrance and exit of the boreholes.

On behalf of Airbus and together with the aviation supplier FACC, PROFACTOR developed the sensor H-Scan in 27 months of work. It works like an endoscope. PROFACTOR has developed a camera-based sensor that can be used in boreholes with a diameter of at least 4 millimetres. At the tip of the endoscope, there are six adjustable light sources. They provide photometric stereo images that are evaluated by image processing software. PROFACTOR can fall back on many years of experience with Machine Vision and fiber-reinforced composites.

PROFACTOR was represented at the JEC World 2018 - the leading international trade fair for composites - with the topic of non-destructive inspection (Hall 5A, Booth R84).