TPT September 2008

T echnology U pdate

both magnesium and aluminium. Because of the better corrosion protection of MagiZinc as compared with conventional zinc coatings, this offers the opportunity to reduce the metallic coating weight while still improving the properties of the material. Thinner and lighter coating layers are possible resulting in up to 4 per cent more m 2 per tonne material for the end customers. The first aim will be to replace the standard product coating of 275g/m 2 zinc with a MagiZinc coating of 140g/m 2 . Even thinner coating layers are under development. Following lab-scale and pilot line trials by the Corus R&D department, Corus went on to optimise the coating in a number of production trials in cooperation with development partner Salzgitter AG. In conjunction with this, material application trials – including forming and joining – were carried out at selected customers with good results. Corus Strip Products Ijmuiden, The Netherlands, is one of the largest and most efficient integrated steelmaking facilities in Europe, producing about 7.5 million

tonnes of high quality strip and coated steel products for the automotive, construction and packaging sectors. Corus – The Netherlands Fax : +31 251 470000 Website : www.corusgroup.com

setup and correction of the corresponding bending machines. With the release of the new version 4.0 software, the system additionally captures the segment of free- form tubes. By applying version 4.0, which will be delivered with TubeInspect systems from the start of this year, free-form geometries can be metrologically acquired, making it possible to inspect serial parts within seconds. For the documentation of the measuring results, the user can create reporting templates that TubeInspect will fill with data. Featuring intuitive user guidance and a brand new ‘wizard’ for the measuring of master tubes, the system is designed to enable even beginners in the field of optical metrology to carry out measurements easily. Version 4.0 will be delivered with all TubeInspect systems, from the large TubeInspect measuring cell and the smaller TubeInspect S, to TubeInspect HD. Aicon 3D Systems GmbH – Germany Fax : +49 531 58 000 60 Email : info@aicon.de Website : www.aicon3d.com

New software release enables measurement of free-form tubes

Aicon 3D Systems, Germany, is a provider of optical camera based 3D measurement systems, and develops and distributes systems for inspection and testing, as well as car safety and tube inspection. The majority of the company’s clients operate in the automotive and aerospace market. The company has carried out further development of its TubeInspect optical 3D tube measuring system in order to make it ready for new measuring tasks. TubeInspect’s existing repertoire consists of geometry inspection of conventionally bent tubes with constant diameters and the

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S eptember 2008

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