In:
Research and Review Journal of Nondestructive Testing, NDT.net GmbH & Co. KG, Vol. 1, No. 1 ( 2023-08)
Abstract:
Automatic inspection of castings with X-rays (radiographic and computed tomography)
is widespread for parts that are relevant for safety or have high quality requirements. Examples in the automotive sector are aluminum wheels, chassis parts and new parts
within the electric power train. Those parts are automatically inspected, which means that both the image acquisition and the evaluation of the images is done fully
automatically. Today, in most industrial implementations, the generated data with a size up to several gigabytes per part is summarized to a simple good or bad decision,
according to specification. All other data is dismissed, although this information can be valuable to optimize production processes and thus minimize rejects.
This contribution gives an overview about the results of the project Cast Control, which is a collaboration of Fraunhofer Development Center for X-ray Technology EZRT,
Fraunhofer Center for Applied Research on Supply Chain Services SCS and industry partner RONAL GROUP. RONAL GROUP is a major aluminum wheel manufacturer,
mainly for the OEM market. Within the project we combined serial production data from the low pressure die casting process from a foundry of the RONAL GROUP with
the data generated in the automatic X-ray inspection. After collecting a large base of sample data, we were able train a neural network for the prediction of error metrics
obtained by X-ray inspection. We apply a combination of layer-wise relevance propagation and dimensionality reduction to find correlations between data of the
casting machines (process and sensor) and the characteristics of anomalies detected during X-ray inspection.
With this information, it is possible to adjust the casting process in an early stage – even before rejects are produced. This enables the foundry to reduce their rejects rate, which
saves costs and energy and results in a better competitivenessin a better competitiveness.
Type of Medium:
Online Resource
ISSN:
2941-4989
Language:
Unknown
Publisher:
NDT.net GmbH & Co. KG
Publication Date:
2023
