TPT September 2008

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77 September 2008
Technology Update
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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
m2 per tonne material for the end customers.
The first aim will be to replace the standard
product coating of 275g/m2 zinc with a
MagiZinc coating of 140g/m2. 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:
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
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:
Website: