Initial situation:

Measuring height and width of glowing steel castings

We received an order from one of the biggest steel manufacturers in the world, which offers material for civil construction, automotive, industrial, agriculture applications and various other sectors.

The customer intends to achieve an automatic 100% measurement of height and width of glowing elements produced in his continuous casting line, with an accuracy level in the range of mm.

Until now, this dangerous task was carried out by employees wearing protective clothing with manual measurement tools like caliper.

Particular challenge

The laser scanners have to be operated in an extremely hot environment and are subjected to considerable thermal radiation arising from the cast parts. Therefore, they have to be cooled down by a water-based cooling system and covered with insulating material.

QuellTech solution

This task is a typical application of the high-resolution QuellTech 2D/3D Q5-880 Blue Laser Scanners. Two of these units are placed at the left and at the right of the measuring objects, at a defined inclination angle. Blue laser light in this case is a prerequisite, as the cast parts are red-hot, hence emitting in the red spectral range. Additionally, the client was in need of a software solution for the project, so a 3D point cloud processing application was implemented, performing inline and evaluating width, height and angle results.

Benefits for the client

With this QuellTech solution, the customer is able to inspect continuously the product quality, simultaneously avoiding scrap. He uses the same system for more than 10 different types of castings. Errors caused by manual inspection are considerably reduced, and safety for personnel is enhanced.