20th International Forgemasters Meeting - IFM 2017

In the forging sector, during the open die forging process, dimensional checks are necessary to guarantee that the final component is extracted from the forged envelope. Usually, the forged envelope needs to be enough to accommodate surface features typically associated with forging, whilst not being overly generous, as this decreases yield whilst increasing cost. Typically, forgings are measured manually during forging, these measurements are performed at very high temperature (~1200 °C) and components are of considerable size. For this reason measurements can present health and safe challanges, only a few measurements are performed and the forging cannot be fully characterized. Moreover the quality of such measurements depends upon operator skills or experience and thus subject to variability. The solution adopted by MERMEC is the 3D Portal. This paper presents the revised and improved version of a laser measuring system capable of producing a full 3D survey of large, complex components at hot forging and ambient temperatures. The paper will describe the implementation and use of the 3D Portal, capable of measuring bulk component dimensions as well as quality parameters such as linearity/straightness, concentricity/ovality. The software used to manipulate the scanned data and allows 2D/3D visualization and comparison with CAD models of the required geometries. The analysis software includes moreover a bespoke reporting system, designed to replace manually recorded quality information.