The
Q.U.M.E. project
'QUality
optimisation for the manufacturing of cast MEtallic parts'
Status:
Completed Project
website: www.qumeproject.com
Overview
A European project team is set to
make major improvements to casting quality by changing the way they
are inspected.
A
group of industrial monitoring specialists and technical organisations
have collaborated on a project to improve the product quality and
process control of cast metallic parts, aiming to result in a 20%
manufacturing cost saving and reduce inspection and quality management
cost by 10-50%.
 The
project, called QUME, (QUality optimisation for the manufacturing
of cast MEtallic parts), is partly funded by the European Commission
and has pulled together the experience and technical expertise of
several European research and academic organisations along with
specialist monitoring and quality management companies.
The
aim is to focus the potential of proven developed technologies and
techniques in inspection, testing and data management and to harness
them in an integrated fashion that provides the optimum platform
for in-line inspection and quality assurance of cast parts.
Maintaining
the quality of casting is an expensive business, critical components
need to be 100% inspected before they can be sent to a user or customer,
less critical castings tend to be batch or randomly tested for faults.
The
challenge therefore is how to improve the reliability and effectiveness
of inspection without adding cost. Indeed the QUME project team
have deliberately set out to try to turn the present approach on
its head by taking a 100% testing approach, but using in-line techniques
so that fault detection does not create production or quality process
complications and at the same time reducing its cost.
The
approach will create a new intelligent manufacturing system (IMS)
which is based on the fusion of two relatively new quantitative
non-destructive characterisation (QNDC) techniques namely; intensity
calibrated high spatial resolution (microfocus) x-radioscopy and
multi-sensor vibration analysis techniques.
By
overlapping these technologies, virtually any casting fault can
be detected during the production process. Process or condition
related decision taking would then be possible due to the multidimensional
pattern recognition techniques, coupled with image processing procedures
to allow a fast quantitative defect detection and characterisation.
Essentially
the proposal is for all castings to be captured as they leave the
mould and automatically tested either using vibration analysis and
x-ray. There is some concern that x-ray technology is expensive
and outside the reach of many foundries. But the project hopes to
address this in two ways; firstly by designing on-line x-ray systems
that are practical and affordable and by introducing vibration based
analysis which can offer an alternative economy package where investment
cannot be fully justified.
The
use of X-ray techniques to inspect the integrity of industrial products
dates back to the turn of the century. Therefore, there is nothing
inherently new about the use of X-rays to carry out inspection of
castings. What is new, is the technology improvements associated
with the creation of the X-ray image and the modern computer hardware
and software improvements that allow the X-ray inspection process
to be carried out at high speed and in a true fully automatic mode.
The
evolution of the X-ray inspection technique, as used in the casting
industry, has gone from producing an image using a crude low light,
noisy phosphor screen that fluoresces when bombarded with ionising
radiation, to a high resolution clean image generated using digital
imaging devices. The main advantage of the image intensifier is
that it produces a live real time representation as the image is
generated at a video frame rate of 30 per second. As a consequence,
the image is constantly being refreshed and the operator can view
the live image while the casting under inspection is being manipulated.
The
QUME project intends to make the x-ray process an automated in-line
system which reads and recognises problems and can reject or pass
finished castings without the cumbersome and costly process of intervention
by a trained technologist.
Vibration
analysis is much newer to the world of cast parts structural quality
monitoring. Tests by the project team have proven however, that
it is very effective at detecting fractures, voids or porosity and
can recognise where a combination of problems may exist with a casting,
even where these may have been difficult to see using other established
techniques.
The
project sees merging of the two technologies together using a common
software platform providing an extremely powerful, zero defect quality
system which could be a significant cost reduction solution for
critical applications such as aerospace, transport or medical uses.
At present they demand 100% inspection, which is usually carried
out off-line in cost and time consuming laboratories.
Fault
finding is only one half of the quality process and feeding defect
information back to production on fault diagnosis which could then
drive process adjustments, manufacturing improvements and much a
lower scrap rate .
The
vision, set to become a reality when the results of the project
are brought to market in 2004, will see a very significant reduction
in casting defaults, improved quality and performance of cast parts
and serious cost savings in quality monitoring and production as
improved quality converts to lower waste and higher outputs.
Indeed
the project team has set itself some tough objectives, aiming to
reduce scrap rates by 80% and slashing the time for quality control
procedures by up to 75%. If such targets can be realised by the
industry it could herald a step change for the European foundry
industry, placing them at a major competitive advantage over global
competitors.
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