Development and Application of an Operator Vision Assistance System for Enhanced Direct Process Control in Foundrie

Purpose and goal

Proper slag control is a challenge to steel foundries as it is difficult to visually distinguish steel and slag at high temperature, even for skilled operators. The main purpose of the project was to address this challenge by enhancing the vision of the foundry operators by developing and testing a vision assistance system, thereby giving a direct online control over the metallurgical process. A protoype of such a system was developed and was tested in the Österby Gjuteri.

Expected results and effects

The tests of the prototype system showed promising application of OViAs in slag control. It is estimated that with OViAs, the use of slag binder can be optimised, i.e., slag binder can be added at right locations on melt surface and in right amounts. This is believed to reduce the cost of buying slag binder by 5-10%. Moreover, slag binder optimisation will reduce quality defects, caused by slag inclusions. This is expected to reduce the production cost by 5-10%.

Planned approach and implementation

The project was split into different work packages. The intital work packages focussed on setting up OViAs demonstrator. This demonstrator was tested at foundry in the subsequent work packages. Simultaneously, emissivity tests were carried out on liquid slag and liquid steel, as part of OViAs calibration. In the final work packages, improvements were made to setup the OViAs protoype. This protoype was tested by operators at foundry to identify the technical and economical benefits.