Waygate Technologies and Varex Imaging have signed a formal partnership to pair Waygate's portable nondestructive testing (NDT) platforms with Varex's digital X-ray detector portfolio, targeting field radiography at industrial and energy infrastructure sites. The agreement positions two established NDT suppliers on the same side of a multi-decade shift away from film and computed radiography (CR).

What does the partnership actually combine?

Waygate brings its installed base of portable NDT systems and the inspection workflows that pipeline operators, power-plant owners, and pressure-vessel fabricators already use. Varex supplies the digital detector modules — flat-panel arrays, readout electronics, and high-voltage interfaces — that convert incident X-ray photons into image data without the cassette handling that CR and film require.

The two companies frame the collaboration as an offering, not a single product. Customers will see tighter integration between Varex's detector hardware and Waygate's imaging software and inspection rigs, with shared calibration routines and a unified service path.

Why digital instead of film or CR?

Field radiography has used silver-halide film for nearly a century. Film delivers high intrinsic resolution (typically 20–50 µm grain structures) and a wide dynamic range, but it requires wet chemistry, darkrooms, and manual archiving. Computed radiography, which uses photostimulable phosphor plates, removes the chemistry yet still needs a scanner and a cassette pass.

Direct digital radiography replaces the cassette with a flat-panel detector — typically amorphous silicon or CMOS paired with a cesium iodide or gadolinium oxysulfide scintillator. The detector converts X-ray photons to electrical charge in real time, producing a usable image in seconds. Pixel pitch on current panels runs 100–200 µm, so spatial resolution cannot match film's grain. Detective quantum efficiency at typical industrial energies, however, often exceeds both film and CR. The result: shorter exposure times, lower scatter, and reduced dose to operators and surrounding areas.

Which standards govern the work?

Field radiography of welds falls under ISO 17636-2, with ASTM E2738 and EN 16407 covering practical detector qualification. Energy-sector inspection adds ASME Section V Article 2 for fabrication and ASME Section XI for in-service components. ISO 17636-2 ties pixel pitch, focal spot size, and source-to-detector distance together through a basic spatial resolution (SRb) metric and a signal-to-noise requirement. A detector that works in a shielded cabinet does not automatically qualify outdoors, where temperature drift, battery operation, and scatter geometry add noise that the lab qualification does not cover.

What does the move change for buyers?

Three practical questions follow. Procurement teams that already standardized on Varex detectors for cabinet systems gain a faster path to field-deployed DR. Inspection service companies still running film or CR must weigh capital outlay against throughput, image-archive cost, and the digital submission requirements that pipeline operators and power-plant owners now routinely impose. The third question is calibration. Every detector needs a defect-recognition calibration under the relevant standard before a weld can be accepted, and joint calibration procedures from the two suppliers could compress a qualification step that today often runs months behind equipment purchase.

Does the partnership address compliance?

The agreement responds to a compliance question already on inspection buyers' desks. Major energy operators in North America and the EU now require digital submission of radiographic records for new pipeline construction and pressure-equipment fabrication. Film rarely appears in current tenders; CR is being phased out.

The unanswered question is whether the joint offering will arrive with pre-validated qualification packages for ISO 17636-2, ASME V, and ASME XI. Without those, the partnership accelerates a sales conversation but not a field deployment. With them, Waygate and Varex shorten the time between detector purchase and first qualified weld.