What is a Borescope?

The past 40 years have witnessed an almost explosive growth in the need for NDT/RVI (non-destructive testing/ remote viewing inspections).  Visual inspection, the most basic method of non-destructive testing, has seen amazing technological advances.  The primary problem encountered with visual evaluation has always involved the limits of accessibility to the inspection areas, industrial borescopes help fill this need.  Borescopes allow for an internal inspection without disassembly saving time and money.

Originally designed to meet the needs of the aviation industry, industrial borescopes are now used in a variety of applications.  These applications include aviation, aerospace, sanitation, automotive, weaponry, casting, law enforcement, electronics, refining, and power generation.  To meet the needs of the individual industries, these scopes come in an assortment of diameters and working lengths.  They can be customized with side view adapters, battery packs, outer coverings, and working channel tools.

There are two different types of borescopes – fiberoptic and video.  Both are used to view objects that are not accessible for direct viewing.  By illuminating an object and relaying a magnified optical image to an eyepiece or video processor the viewer is able to see the inside of the object.  Fiber optic borescopes use bundles of fibers and objective lenses surrounded by optical systems that provide light and videoscopes use camera chips and electronic image signals.