Steel
Steel quality is essential in today's competitive markets. And downtime in the steel industry is expensive, costing several thousand dollars for every minute that equipment is under repair. Infrared cameras are helping steel manufacturers address both of these issues. Infrared cameras can monitor steel quality during production, and they can improve maintenance programs by enabling routine thermal surveys of ladles, torpedo cars, and other refractory equipment and/or components, as well as the large, high horsepower motors running the finishing mill stands.
FLIR ThermoVision A20 infrared cameras are ideal for the steel industry, providing fast, reliable, accurate monitoring and control. They enable steel mills to routinely achieve and verify temperature tolerances in processes that can't be effectively monitored in any other way. For example, FLIR infrared cameras can monitor the entire visible surface of 8-inch thick slab of hot steel for temperature abnormalities as they emerge from the casters. Even small temperature inconsistencies in these slabs could indicate the presence of holes, which could lead to production delays in the finishing mill.
FLIR "smart" ThermoVision A20 and A40 Series IR cameras are lightweight and extremely rugged, so they're easy to deploy wherever needed in the plant. A range of interchangeable lenses and accessories make FLIR ThermoVision A20 and A40 cameras the complete process monitoring solution.
And they offer a revolutionary set of monitoring and control options:
• full-motion output of infrared video in real-time (60-Hz) for viewing on a monitor and/or to a video recorder
• plug-and-play Ethernet and FireWire (IEEE 1394) connectivity for fast and easy setup
• multiple, independent digital and analog alarming with user-configured temperature thresholds or temperature differences.
• access to multiple cameras by multiple users anywhere, anytime over a LAN, WAN, or the Internet using a standard Web browser; can view real-time video and configure camera targets and alarms remotely
• FLIR ThermoVision A20 and A40 infrared cameras can be used for process development and optimization, industrial process monitoring, product verification, quality assurance, and security applications. Their advanced detection technology can measure subtle temperature differences from a distance, through smoke, fog, and steam. And, with FLIR's revolutionary built-in logic and multiple independent alarming, these cameras are ideal for autonomous process control and monitoring.
• Using LabVIEW and FLIR's LabVIEW Developers toolkit, you can turn the A20 or A40 into a powerful machine vision tool with a minimal investment in software development. Or, use your own programming environment in conjunction with FLIR's ThermoVision System Developers Kit (SDK). Based on ActiveX and Visual Basic C++, this SDK gives you complete access to camera measurements, and source code examples help you significantly shorten programming time and make customization easy.
To learn more about FLIR ThermoVision infrared cameras, please see the materials listed at the right of the previous page. To discuss your specific application requirements, contact a FLIR infrared applications specialist by phone at 800-464-6372 or by e-mail to: IR Applications Specialist. Welcome to the FLIR infrared family of products - the world's most tested solutions for industrial-strength thermal imaging, measurement, and temperature-based process control!
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