Mechanical engineer turned software engineer here; I love this kind of stuff and I frequently wonder how I might apply my software expertise to that domain again. Amongst other things I worked in automotive and the components I worked on were forged and heat treated high strength steels. The defects in forged components are often very small (tens of microns) but I'd be curious if this could work there. We used powerful microscopes - including electron microscopes - on the production lines so maybe that would work?