John Garrison is a SDT Level One Trained Ultrasound Inspector working as a Melt Shop Mechanical Technician in Alabama. This is part of his reliability journey as told by him.

As a mechanic in charge of a portion of the mill, safety and reliability are a must for myself, my company, and our customers. Giving our Operations group the best equipment and training possible are key to our success. For years we have outsourced the vibration, oil, and thermal analysis of our predictive maintenance program, and for years we have thought it was acceptable. But I can recall many occasions when components said to be good, turned out to be bad, or components said to be bad, turned out good. It was clear that our reliability program needed more.

I was approached by management and asked to lead an ultrasound campaign to improve our reliability program. The first thing we did was buy an SDT270 unit. When it arrived, I found myself staring at an expensive, little blue box which I had no clue what to do with. Shortly after I discovered SDT had a Live Online Level 1 Class starting soon, so I registered. I was pleased with all the additional on-demand webinars, lessons, and hours of learning from experienced reliability professionals that also came with the course.

I would recommend this course to anyone interested in becoming more familiar with ultrasound regardless of current skill set. There is something to be learned for all levels of ultrasound inspectors. While some classes make you feel like a prisoner voluntold to be there, not here. It is fun, engaging, and flourished with a plethora of useful knowledge and information. In the short 8 weeks of this class, I have found several failing components in our mill. I’ve been able to prevent unplanned downtime multiple times by planning to change the components on our time rather than running them to failure.