An automated impact echo inspection process that can be directly applied to quality assurance of composite brake pad parts in a mass production environment. These brake pads are used in the rear-brake assembly of the Drum type brakes.  The specimens are excited by an impact actuated by a solenoid, and the acoustic signal is recorded using a microphone and a multimedia PC.  Frequency extraction is done on the time domain signal and the frequency spectral data was used as input to a neural network to detects the defects or delaminations in the composites at very high production rates (2-5 parts per second).