During the steel manufacturing process, it is crucial to measure the steel bars to obtain the best tolerance in straightness. For that, quality control in steel fabrication needs to be perfect. Let this company challenge you to solve this situation and participate!

Background

Celsa is a company specialized in the manufacturing of steel products, among which are laminates steel bars.

The Challenge

Celsa is looking for a system to measure if the produced laminated steel bars comply with the expected tolerance in straightness. The system must be able to measure the straightness with 6σ reliability, monitor the collected information and identify values out of tolerance.

First the “lateral” straightness is measured leaving the bar as it comes from the production line. The bar is then tipped 90º (as in picture “Sagitta Measurement”) to check for the “vertical” straightness.

A video and more pictures are provided so that the solvers can understand the current process and available space.

What the Client Is Looking for

The Client is looking for a solution that:

– measures straightness and controls for tolerance compliance in a continuous way so that the installation mustn’t be stopped for the manual measurement, meaning up to 3% of loss in productivity.

– send the collected information to a measurement program that saves the information and generates an alarm in case of non-conformity to the expected tolerance

– measures both lateral and vertical straightness (as described earlier and in document “Typical Tolerance”). The proposed solution will require the 90º tipping to measure both straightness, so the system must be able to execute the tipping to measure and to leave the bar in its original position in an automatized way.

Evaluation Criteria

– Precision of the measurement (within expected tolerance)

– Lower estimated costs (total investment shall be less than € 100,000)

– Easy to add to the existing installation

– Technical solution

– Feasibility evidence

– Innovation factor

Timeline

This is a 1-round tournament with the following timings

1st round – 8 weeks + 3 weeks for evaluation

Prize