Circular Knives are used in steel service centres to cut the coil to strips. Long usage and force lead to abrasion and blunt knife edges. Moreover, cracks at the knife’s edge may damage the material and lead to a high amount of waste. Therefore, the early detection of defects of circular knives is highest priority.

The new system imess S25-R automatically inspects circular knives to ensure high cut quality.

The knives are placed onto the system by the customer by a robot, for instance. Subsequently, two laser scanners scan both knife edges during a 380° rotation. Afterwards, the knife is returned automatically to the setting position for being grabbed by the handling module and processed further.

The collected raw data of the scanner is transferred to the inspection software at once and evaluated in seconds. The judgement either “ok” or “not ok” knife is done according to adjustable tolerances in the software. The results of the characteristics “abrasion” and “cracks” are both considered for the evaluation. One characteristic exceeding the tolerances is enough to judge the knife as not okay.

All damages are listed in a table with measurement value and position accurate to the degree. The knife edge is reproduced with a regression line to calculate crack depth and abrasion accurately. In addition, a visualisation increases the operator friendliness of the software. The various functions of the system also include the data export for results.