Real time online profile measurement system for steel wire products

Abstract

The quality specifications for products such as wire rods produced by the steel industry are becoming ever more demanding. This demand has led to achieve uniform product quality at high production speeds. As a result, there is a need for the systems that operate in real time and continuously measure cross-section profile of the rods and detect if any change or deviation from the desired behaviour in their cross-section. To reach this goal, a laser-based computer-controlled technology provides a useful solution. In this paper, a high speed, low cost and high accuracy non-contact laser-based measuring system has been proposed and developed using a STM32 microcontroller. The system can measure the thickness of solid, non-transparent wire rods using the linear charged-coupled sensor and sent to a microcontroller unit to further analyse and continuously display the cross-sectional profile in real time. Any deviation in the dimension over the length of the wire along with its position with respect to starting of the wire can be detected in real time. The designed and developed system has capability of measurement accuracies and respectabilities to the micrometre level.