Modelling and Real-Time Simulation for Hot Coil Marking

In manufacturing industry, final product marking is very important task for identification. There are various marking technologies available in industry like laser marking and robotic marking system with various end effectors according to relevant application. In steel industries, coils are made from hot rolling process and during manufacturing temperature of coils are very high. Presently, in steel industry for coil identification, they are using robotic marking machine with dot matrix and nozzle system. Using this system they are marking information of coil like width, thickness, manufacturing date, etc. In robotic marking, machine has monopoly in marking industry, but at the same time, high capital investment and maintenance cost are involved. In steel industry during down time phase, operators need to mark manually on hot coil which is very tiresome and unsafe job. So the overall objective of project is to configure new hot coil marking machine with less complex parts and cost compared to robotic marking machine. To achieve above objective, we adopted modified nozzle system technology and three-axis movement for marking. In this modified system, we used disc template, solenoid valve, stepper motor and pump for nozzle marking. The design has been modified using Creo Parametric 3.0 to control three-axis motion of stepper motor, opening and closing of solenoid valve and rotation of disc template, and simulation has been developed using MATLAB software. This simulation will show running time of our marking machine and also the graphs of three axes. Final working prototype has been developed with above reference. This modified hot coil marking system will substitute present marking machine with less cost and maintenance. It will be helpful.