Industrial CT software and services vendor Glimpse has launched Explore, a new package on its Glimpse Portal that the company says brings X-ray vision to all hardware teams, extending the platform beyond its battery-industry roots into medical devices, aerospace, automotive, additive manufacturing, and electronics.

Explore joins two existing Portal packages, Battery and Automate, and marks the company's stated expansion into five additional verticals. No pricing, throughput figures, or detector specifications accompanied the announcement, so the claims below are vendor positioning rather than measured performance.

What is industrial CT, and why does packaging matter?

Industrial computed tomography (CT) reconstructs a three-dimensional volume from hundreds to thousands of X-ray projections taken as the part rotates on a stage. The technique reveals internal porosity, delamination, and dimensional deviations without cutting the component open, which is why battery cell inspection, castings, and additively built parts lean on it heavily.

The bottleneck has rarely been the scan itself. Review, analysis, and reporting of the resulting voxel datasets consume the engineering hours, and that workflow — not the X-ray tube — is what software packages like Explore target.

Who is the intended user?

Glimpse positions Explore as accessible to "all hardware teams," implying a shift from dedicated metrology specialists toward design and manufacturing engineers who need scan answers without deep CT expertise. The named verticals share a common trait: internal geometry that matters for safety or function.

• Medical devices — implantable and catheter-based components where internal defects carry regulatory weight
• Aerospace — castings and AM structures under fatigue-driven qualification
• Automotive — powertrain and structural castings
• Additive manufacturing — porosity and melt-pool integrity checks
• Electronics — solder joints, bonding, and package-level inspection

The battery vertical stays put in its own dedicated package. Explore is the generalist sibling.

Measured performance versus vendor claim

Here the record is short. The announcement describes capability and market intent; it supplies no scan-resolution figures, no reconstruction times, no accuracy statements, and no third-party validation. Buyers evaluating Explore against incumbent analysis tools — VGSTUDIO, Volume Graphics descendants, or ZEISS offerings — will need to run their own reference parts.

That's normal for a software package launch. It's also the whole reason reference scans exist.

The adoption question

The launch raises a familiar sourcing question for metrology managers: does a subscription package tied to a services vendor's portal outperform perpetually licensed desktop analysis seats already validated against your part portfolio? For teams already scanning at service bureaus rather than in-house labs, the friction is low. For captive CT labs with established workflows, the case needs numbers.

Glimpse has declared intent across five verticals. The proof, as always, arrives with the first customer datum.