Middle East Tube Company (Metco) is using a laser profile scanner from Micro-Epsilon to inspect the weld seams on the steel pipes it manufactures. As these pipes are used for transporting sewage, water, oil or gas, the weld seam produced during the pipe manufacturing process must be absolutely leak-tight.
The pipe material is joined to a pipe using the spiral welding technique. The positioning of the metal sheets for this process was previously carried out manually. However, the difficulties in aligning the pipes accurately resulted in continual problems.
Using Micro-Epsilon’s scanControl 2710 laser profile scanner, the positioning process is now performed automatically at Metco. The calculated profile information is used to control the positioning process directly. The optional output unit performs the conversion of this data via FireWire.
The measuring object rotates at a speed of 1.5m/min. The ambient temperature at the sensor reaches a maximum of 40°C. The scanner is positioned in such a way that no special cooling is required.
The 2710 is part of Micro-Epsilon’s Smart series of scanControl laser profile scanners. The Smart series has been developed to process the measurement profile data internally and calculate common parameters - for example, step height, gap, width, relative position, etc.
The sensors will not only derive multiple parameters from a common library in parallel, but also multiple pass/fail switch outputs. This enables the user to configure the sensor once, and then allow the sensor to operate in standalone mode without any additional PC or PLC. Both digital and analogue outputs are available directly from the sensor. The scanControl 2710 offers all this functionality in a single integrated solution.
