[en] Bendix Kansas City manufactures a wide variety of mechanical, electrical and electronic systems for the DOE. Many of these components require plating operations, for functional and economic reasons. Platings are applied for corrosion protection, for wear resistance for improved contact performance, for contact lubrication and to form functional conductor networks. Within the last few years requirements for inspection of specialized platings have necessitated a significant increase in both the accuracy of plating thickness measurement and an order of magnitude increase in the speed of measurement. Fabrication of conductor networks with an average thickness of 10 micrometers and requiring better than 1% the uniformity have resulted in the need to redesign the electronics of radiation detectors and the staging mechanisms traditionally used for beta backscatter measurement. A first generation improved beta backscatter system developed as a result of the needs is described