Inline inspection in Roll Form mill
Inline inspection in Roll Form mill
(OP)
Hey guys,
I work as an engineer where we use roll form lines to produce a beam. I was trying to investigate different methods for automated inspection at the unload table. An operator currently visually inspects the beam, and packs it.
I would like to start by looking for cracks in the beam between holes, these form as it is stressed by a bending procedure.
I have found so far Eddy Current, Vision, and Laser inspection methods.
I have very little experience with implementing these, and was wondering a few things. Besides what I have listed, is there anything worth me looking into. Second, what would be the most reliable, repeatable, and easiest to maintain / adjust out of these.
I work as an engineer where we use roll form lines to produce a beam. I was trying to investigate different methods for automated inspection at the unload table. An operator currently visually inspects the beam, and packs it.
I would like to start by looking for cracks in the beam between holes, these form as it is stressed by a bending procedure.
I have found so far Eddy Current, Vision, and Laser inspection methods.
I have very little experience with implementing these, and was wondering a few things. Besides what I have listed, is there anything worth me looking into. Second, what would be the most reliable, repeatable, and easiest to maintain / adjust out of these.





RE: Inline inspection in Roll Form mill
Inspecting cracks out is not the solution, elimination of the cracking is the best solution. There are other solutions such as reducing the bending by redesign of the rolled cross section or adding additional roll stands reducing the amount of bending between each stand.
Bill
RE: Inline inspection in Roll Form mill
Thanks for the answer. It is a harder steel (martinsite structure. Working on methods of eliminating the cracking within the means, cant change the steel since its specified, it doesn't crack in the rolls, it cracks in the sweep. Its thought that the mill slows down during the sweeping process, causing it at the weld to slow down. So we are working on this.
In the mean time I need to provide a method to prevent a cracked one of getting to the operators inspection / unload. This would be where the system I was asking about came in.
RE: Inline inspection in Roll Form mill
RE: Inline inspection in Roll Form mill
RE: Inline inspection in Roll Form mill
RE: Inline inspection in Roll Form mill
RE: Inline inspection in Roll Form mill
If so, you may be able to sort the incoming coils by hardness, keep the soft ones, and throw away the hard ones instead of bothering to process them. It's expensive, but cheaper than making scrap and detecting it after forming.
Or, you may be able to reduce the strain in the finished article enough to prevent cracking with some adjustments to the tooling. To explore that, you'd want to measure the _exact_ geometry produced, and calculate the resulting strains, then compare the produced geometry with what's on the part print to see where you have room to adjust the tooling, e.g. with bigger radii in selected locations.
You might want to examine the mill certs for the incoming material, and have the material itself tested; forgery is not unknown in the steel business.
Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA
RE: Inline inspection in Roll Form mill
Markerinhand, what is your output rate? There are manual methods of NDE that can accomplish multiple large parts within 10 Minutes eg Water Washable Fluorescent Dye Penetrant Testing. I'm assuming your cracks are open to surface?
Remember you do not need to perform NDE on all your beams. Having your operators perform 100% Visual testing while performing Dye Penetrant Testing on a sample percentage (maybe 10%) of beams, while also trying to fix your fabrication process to minimize of cracking, should be a satisfactory attempt at ensuring a quality product.
RE: Inline inspection in Roll Form mill
Out is roughly 24 feet a minute, about 4 parts a minute, 2000ish a shift (7.4 hours).
The problem I am having is not in mass quantity (where die penetration in a sample would help), but in the flyers of 2 or 3 parts getting to my next operation.
They do 100% visual, required to touch key aspects of the beam, but its found to maybe be 80% effective depending on who is doing it.
Started speaking with some on Eddy Current inspection. Also trying to push to trial a vision system (failed in the past apparently).
Any other opinions would be helpful towards the detection side.
RE: Inline inspection in Roll Form mill
You may need some operator training though.
Link
RE: Inline inspection in Roll Form mill
RE: Inline inspection in Roll Form mill
RE: Inline inspection in Roll Form mill