Why Choose Cygnus

Who are Cygnus Instruments

The Cygnus Instruments Head Office is based in the South-West of the United Kingdom and is privately owned. The company has been manufacturing and selling ultrasonic testing equipment worldwide, and into all industries, since 1983 – following its original roots of non-destructive testing of ships’ hulls.

Originally focused on providing simple-to-use, rugged ultrasonic thickness testers for ship surveyors and commercial divers have meant that Cygnus is a trusted manufacture within the marine and shipping industry. All Cygnus ultrasonic thickness testing equipment can deal with the harshest of environments due to their extremely robust and rugged design. This is emphasised in Cygnus’ philosophy for product development “Reliability, Accuracy and Ease of Use”.

With years of experience and knowledge, we believe we are true experts in delivering the very best and most accurate ultrasonic testing equipment – with simplicity-of-use at its heart!

History of Cygnus Instruments

In the 1970s, IACS and all the major Classification Societies required Ship Surveyors to carry out periodic inspection of ships using, what we would consider today, very heavy and outdated equipment. So, the founder of Cygnus, who was also a Ship Surveyor, went about developing a much smaller and lightweight digital ultrasonic thickness tester at his Dorchester based in the United Kingdom.

Pioneering the Multiple-Echo technique, the founder of Cygnus was able to produce an ultrasonic thickness tester that could reliably and repeatedly ‘read-through’ thick marine anti-fouling paint. The IACS and Class Societies immediately saw the significance of this, with the IACS specifying this in their document covering ‘requirements for ultrasonic thickness measurement’ which is still valid to this day.

Cygnus Instruments Today

Since the 1980s, the company and product range has significantly grown thanks to our application-driven and user-focused approach to market research and product development, with putting much emphasis on listening to our customer requirements and their feedback.

With many years of research, development, and continued investment we have set and raised the benchmark for accurate thickness measurement devices. And to further expand the usability of our thickness testers, we have incorporated Echo-Echo and Single-Echo measuring modes, top-level dataloggers and units with live waveform which are employed in almost all industries worldwide:

We have also developed an ultrasonic leak detection system used for checking weathertight hatch covers on bulk carriers, testing water-tight doors and tightness testing of any closing equipment.

And most recently, using our years of experience and knowledge with ultrasound and making equipment for the toughest environments, we developed the ultrasonic flooded member detection system – designed for either diver or mounting onto remotely operated vehicles.

Our Care & Quality

Cygnus are constantly being held to the highest standards which is demonstrated by being an ISO-9001 certified company and our intrinsically safe certifications (EX Veritas and CSA).