EoW November 2012

Focus on

Finding welds in automotive wire

Magnetic Analysis Corp’s Minimac® MAC 40 is successfully used to detect butt welds, breaks and/or broken strands, laps, seams, slivers, and cracks in magnetic and non-magnetic grades of wire at speeds up to 4,000ft/min. Typically, large spools of stranded copper automotive wire are run through an extrusion line. However, it is difficult and time consuming to thread the wire when the end of a coil is near. Therefore, the beginning of the next coil is welded to the end of the previous one to maintain a constant run. In this application, the Minimac instrument uses eddy current technology with high speed test coils to detect the weld during the extrusion and coating process at speeds of 1,200ft/min to 3,500ft/min. Outputs are tracked by the customer’s PLC and allow the weld zone to be cut out down-line, before shipment to the end user. The Minimac is a high performance, low cost, compact eddy current tester designed for production line applications. Complete networking capabilities are included. In the installation described above, the customer uses a portable monitor and keyboard for setup and then allows the tester to run unmonitored.

Magnetic Analysis Corporation – USA Website : www.mac-ndt.com

▲ ▲ The Minimac fromMagnetic Analysis

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