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Home > Case Studies > Case Seven Video system to record the position of a furnace plug when operated. The Problem An automatic delivery system has been developed to stem the flow of molten steel out of a furnace when it was being emptied, the furnace plug released by the automatic delivery system has to correctly align itself with the outlet to seal it. The supplier of the automatic delivery system had to prove to a client that the system would consistently seal off the flow of molten steel and decided that a solution using video files would be the easiest to provide to the customer for analysis. This resulted in a requirement for a video system which could record an event occurring over a short period of time in a hostile environment with very high temperatures. The video recording device could be kept in a more amenable environment. Budgetary and time constraints were very tight. Existing systems were not capable of producing a satisfactory solution within these constraints. The Solution A custom built solution was decided upon using a proprietary Notebook computer with a Windows XP Home Edition operating system and a video camera protected with a heat shield and air cooled housing. The required software was developed in-house to enable the required video capture and processing. The video from the camera and trigger signal from the system dropping the furnace plug into the furnace was fed back to the Notebook computer to initiate the recording. The Notebook computer displayed the video overlayed with the current date and time which was saved to standard time stamped .avi files. The Notebook computer had a CD-writer allowing the saved files to be archived to CD and supplied to the prospective client for analysis. The customer was satisfied with the performance of the resultant solution. The software is undergoing continual development and improvement to widen it's scope of usefulness. |
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