Contract X-Ray Inspection
Product Inspecton Services for Food+
Have our experienced technicians inspect your product with the highest-performing equipment today. With a main hub near Portland, OR and a cold storage location in Pasco, WA, we can find any foreign material in any product in any packaging as long as the densities vary enough. We have machines for most package sizes and photon-counting units available.
IS IT AN EMERGENCY? Call 360-903-1690 to skip reception.
Transparent Service
QA Managers
Find the smallest contaminants possible with the current BEST AVAILABLE TECHNOLOGY. We know everyone says they’re the best, just scroll down.
Plant Managers
Streamline your inspection process with our FLEXIBLE SHIPPING options and rapid turnaround times, getting your products back on shelves quickly.
Co-Packers
Customize our inspection services to meet your clients' needs, with TAILORED BILLING options for your business model, or segmented for your customers.
Small Processors
Avoid the red tape and use our team as yours, with a 24/7/365 SERVICE policy for existing customers.
Large Processors
Reduce exposure to liability with full DOCUMENTATION, PRODUCT IMAGES, AND PROOF you used the Best Available Technology.
Crystal-Clear Value
Single Energy
Above is an example of the original detection methodology (applied to food by Eagle in the 90's) with one beam into one set of diodes. As you can see, the contaminants are visible, but large density differences are needed, and small contaminants are hard to find. Some companies have single energy only.
Dual Energy
Again by Eagle, dual energy was introduced under the name MDX. By combining two images of different x-ray intensities, it improved performance across the board. But though developed in 2004, most companies still rely on single energy, offering dual energy as a premium option.
Photon-Counting
Yet again, Eagle has turned the industry on its head with photon-counting, released as PXT. A few have adopted the technology but without the same results. We use PXT.
Do You:
- Have a consumer complaint?
- Suspect contamination?
- Have buyer requirements?
- Have product flagged by a supplier?
- Need to find out which supplier is giving you bad product?
- Have failing inspection equipment?
- Find yourself facing a recall?
No Problem!
1. Call us or submit the form
2. Isolate potentially contaminated product on pallets
3. Ship to our facility
4. Receive cleared product back (98.6% of it on average)
5. Sell it!
Obvious Experience
How well a manufacturer develops a technology is more important than the technology itself—and this is why not all photon-counting, dual energy, or even single energy machines are the same. Similarly, how the technology is attuned to your product makes a huge difference. Many manufacturers use one-size-fits all algorithms so the machines are "plug-and-play" for their customers, but any solution that is "good for all" is excellent for none. And since you're not setting up the machine, why use one that trades quality for simplicity?
ABM has been optimizing x-ray for products like yours since the early days of Eagle, and thus every big advancement since. Our original and most experienced technician operates from our facility and oversees product setup for contract inspection.
Removed Human Error
X-ray performance is determined first by the clarity of your image, and secondly how well you analyze that image. We do not rely on human eyes to identify contaminants in an x-ray image; we use progressive, flexible algorithms that outperform and don't get tired. And although algorithms are harder to quantify than a new technology (like PXT), Eagle's algorithms are also more sophisticated and precise—even than other algorithms.
Radical Performance
See the difference of Eagle's generators, photon-counting, and next-gen dual energy. Click the images to expand.
Years In Business
Machines Available
Happy Customers
Top Producers Use ABM
% of Inspected Product is Cleared
% of Inspected Goods Recalled
F.A.Q.
What contaminants can you find?
X-ray inspection systems can find physical contaminants which have densities that vary enough from the product, regardless of packaging. This includes but is not limited to: metal (ferrous & nonferrous), glass, stone/rock, bone, and sometimes plastics and rubbers.
What kind of products can you inspect with x-ray?
We can inspect any kind of product, and find any contaminant in that product as long as the density varies enough and isn't too small. This technology is aimed at food, but is also effective for some industrial applications when looking for presence/absence of parts and malformed parts, but it is not effective for rating strength and more granular needs.
Common products we inspect include:
- Bread & Baked Goods
- Bagged Grains
- Canned Goods
- Sugar
- Salt
- Flour
- Vegetables
- Fruit Medleys
- Soup
- Ready Meals
- Sausages
- Red Meat
- Poultry
- Pet Food
- Frozen Foods
- Fish & Other Seafood
- Cheese & Other Dairy
- Oils
- Legumes, Beans
- Dried Fruits
- Salads & Leafy Greens
- Spices
- Bulk Product
- Pharmaceuticals & Neutraceuticals
- Pasta & Noodles
- Pizza
- Cereal
- Tortillas & Wraps
- Baby Food
- Infant Formula
- Condiments
- Beverages
- Candy & Other Confectionary
What kind of packaging can you inspect through?
We have yet to encounter packaging we can't inspect through. The most common packaging we see is:
Plastic
Cans, Tin, Aluminum
Foil & Mylar
Glass
Cardboard
Paper
Why X-ray?
X-ray inspection finds more than just metal. It poses no health risks and can find multiple contaminants as well as perform other quality checks such as package integrity, weight, and item count if needed. X-ray also performs better than metal detector in most applications and is not thrown off by frozen or thawing foods.
As outlined in this article, metal detectors are better for small aluminum, foil, and wire. If those are your primary concern, we also rent metal detectors.
How much does it cost?
No one publishes prices because they vary wildly and providers don't want to get into a price war and lose incentives to do the service at all—because it's already pushing down toward cost. That said, the lower-end contracts we see are around (the lowest cost that will be ROI positive) is around $1,500, but those are not very common. At these smaller quanitites many processors won't bother with the internal logistics of palletizing and shipping the product. The lower of the common contracts (when it's definitely worth it to the processor) will be around $7,500. Factor in the shipping and you'll see the reason for the $10-15,000 figure in the "when is it worth it?" question 2 down in these FAQs.
We are not the cheapest provider, but by now you know why.
How can you say you're the best?
We have been applying x-ray since Eagle brought it to the industry (originally as Heimann), and our service manager has been with us since the early days. As such, we have more experience tuning machines to product than (likely) any other company. As far as the quality of machines, we have seen all other manufacturer's pages. They all saying "industry leading", "unrivaled", or other similar terms. But we've had head-to-heads with all of the actual leaders, and none of them can beat Eagle in difficult products. (Many will be comparable with simple, homogenous products; more to come on this in our industry guide.) This is why Eagle has always been the premium industry brand with higher prices and better performance than the rest. As such, we encourage you to send product to us and any other x-ray manufacturer for testing to see the difference for yourself.
When is contract inspection needed?
Short-term needs arise for x-ray for many reasons. Most commonly:
- No x-ray equipment is owned and there is a batch (that is either known to be contaminated or suspected to be so) and it is too large to be shipped economically.
- Lead times for x-ray equipment that's already been purchased is delayed or longer than anticipated, and an x-ray machine is needed to fill the gap.
- A plant is experimenting with a new line or product, and a machine is only needed temporarily.
- Existing equipment is down or out for repair, and contaminants are still a concern.
- There is a surprise buyer audit or new contract, and there isn't enough time to buy a machine.
When is it better to rent?
It's generally better to rent when the cost of sending a machine is less than the cost of sending your product.
Generally it makes sense to rent when the cost of shipping your product is less than the cost of shipping a machine to your facility. A middle-sided machine (with a 17" inspection area width) will typically be in a 84” L x 60” w x 92” T crate, shipped dedicated. If you don't know how much dedicated is, it would be about 9x more expensive than shipping your own product of those dimensions LTL. A rough estimation is about $7500 to ship a machine three States away.
For short-term rentals
Travel costs for urgent needs will run about $3000, so if it's a smaller project, you need to add that cost as well. But if it's a longer-term rental, that cost will be offset because your internal staff will cost less hourly than renting ours.
When is contract inspection worth the cost?
Quite simply, when the value of your product is worth more than the cost of inspection.
If your product has no value beyond the cost to produce it, it's ususually ROI-positive when your at-risk product is worth more than $10-15,000, depending on how far you have to ship it.
However, sometimes other factors will make your product more valuable than the cost of production. For example, if:
- The product is needed to fulfill a contract - This happens when the product is needed by a customer, the product you're making now is committed to someone else, and your line is already at capacity.
- You are unable to make the product again - This can happen when you no longer have the ingredients or experienced staff to recreate it.
- It will be more expensive to produce - This can happen if the line has already been repurposed for another product or you would need to pay overtime to accommodate more product
- There is still profit margin to be had - This happens when you still have headroom in your supply and—though you will make less money—you will still make money.
What's the turnaround time?
As soon as the product parameters are set-up on the x-ray machine, inspection can begin. We have enough staff on-hand to handle large jobs quickly, and they can be supplemented with your own on-site to speed things up even more. Smaller, urgent projects we can turn around in a day, and larger projects with more flexible timelines can take a week or two.
What can you find beyond contaminants?
Just as Eagle pioneered the category of product inspection x-ray, so they did with most other capabilities today. These include:
- Product weight
- Item count
- Missing items
- Dislodged or maloriented items
- Damaged or malformed packaging
- Voids (holes in bread, potatoes, etc.)
- Clumps (of fat, sugar, or salt, for example)
- Composition (ie. too many nuts in a bar)
- Anything else involving irregular density spots
How do we know you actually found the contaminant(s)?
Not only do we have some of the current-best equipment on the market, we also have the best software. A detailed report of the inspection including all data and analytics, as well as x-ray inspection images if desired.
What's so great about photon-counting?
Just as Eagle pioneered x-ray product inspection itself and the auxiliary benefits listed in the previous section, they ALSO pioneered dual energy and photon-counting. The effectiveness of dual energy (a technology they released over ten years ago and is still not in use by many manufacturers) you saw above in the photos.
Photon-counting takes this a step further by cutting out the scintillator crystals, thus producing much clearer images. Learn more here. Just like dual energy, auxiliary benefits, and even x-ray itself, other companies have tried to reproduce it but without the same results.