A practical and frugal approach to building an ultrasonic immersion test setup

Ultrasonic inspection plays a critical role in nondestructive material characterization. Contact-based methods have been used in industry and field inspections for decades due to their portability. Although immersion testing provides improved spatial resolution, its adoption has been limited to commercial or research facilities due to its cost and footprint. Here, we present a frugal design for a custom immersion system based on a repurposed three-dimensional printer and show that ultrasonic wave speed measurements collected with the custom system and a commercial system are in statistical agreement. This work enables broader adoption of immersion ultrasonics for industry, education, and workforce development.