Quality control in manufacturing through temperature profile analysis of metal bars: A steel parts use case

Non-uniform heating during metal bar hot forming may impact its straightness. In this study, an infrared non-destructive inspection system is proposed to acquire steel temperature profiles in runtime which should correlate to straightness deviations. Additionally, a machine learning algorithm detects outliers to identify oxides on the metal, which in turn is correlated to process parameters. This allows for proactive temperature adjustment to mitigate the risk based on historical profiles. The proposed approach has been tested in a use case coming from the steel industry.