Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS
Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS
© Fraunhofer IIS

Cast Control

On the way to reject-free production

© Fraunhofer IIS

Cast Control

Cast Control is a joint research project of the Supply Chain Services (SCS) and Development Center X-ray Technology (EZRT) divisions and the light alloy wheel manufacturer Ronal Group. The aim of the project is to identify the causes of rejects and eliminate them at an early stage by combining data from the casting process of light alloy wheels with the results of X-ray inspection. The project brings us a great deal closer to the vision of reject-free production.

Reject-free production is no longer just a vision.

Machine learning as the key to success

© Fraunhofer IIS
The Cast Control system is able to provide product quality forecasts and recommendations on which casting process parameters should be changed to improve product quality and thus reduce rejects.
© Fraunhofer IIS
With the Fraunhofer software solution ISAR, X-ray projections of light alloy wheels can currently be inspected fully automatically for defects.

With the Fraunhofer software solution ISAR, X-ray projections of light alloy wheels can be inspected fully automatically for defects. Both classic image processing chains and machine learning methods are used for this purpose. ISAR then decides based on defined quality criteria whether a wheel is to be declared a reject. The results of the inspection are stored in a database and a statistical evaluation of the results can be visualized via the web-based tool ISAR Statistics.

In the Cast Control project, the results of the X-ray inspection were combined with the recorded sensor data from the casting process and analyzed using machine learning methods.

The Cast Control system is able to provide product quality forecasts and recommendations on which parameters of the casting process should be changed in order to improve product quality and thus reduce rejects.

The long-term goal is to create an automatic control loop as far as possible between the results of the X-ray inspection and the process parameters, so that rejects do not occur in the first place.