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Applications for our products
 The Shapeline systems are used in a multitude of applications. The need for keeping flatness under control on your products stretches from slab to finished product. The reasons for doing so may vary. It may be for optimizing the production process, protecting valuable equipment or, most commonly, delivery of the right quality product to the customers. Shapeline has proven useful in all stages of production, apart from cold rolling where the tension on the material makes optical methods for flatness detection impossible to use.
There are Shapeline systems working in: Continuous casting, hot rolling, electrolytic galvanizing lines, hot-dip galvanizing lines, annealing & pickling lines, hardening lines, quenching lines, quality inspection lines, cutting lines, welding lines, levelling lines (roll levellers and tension levellers), slitting lines … for both plate and strip, steel and aluminum.
What is your reality? Find your application area below and follow the link to see how we have been addressing this area so far. We are always interested in new methods and applications for our technology – so do not hesitate to contact us for needs that may not be covered by the applications below.
Hot Rolling
The shape of the strip or plate that is being set in the hot rolling mill will follow the product during the whole production. The environment can cause problems for measurements in many ways –smoke, vapour, dust and movement in the air because of temperature differences between sensors and the material to be measured, requires the use of air purges and new algorithms in the treatment of data; steel at high temperatures radiates light – the hotter, the wider the spectrum – and to separate the laser line from the background becomes a harder task; with high force, high speed and high temperature, the robustness of the systems is also tested to new levels. Finally the shape of the material will change when cooling. Read more
Coating Lines
The coating of steel and other metals with zinc – galvanizing, tin, plastic or paint in some form, is critical for a steel works’ profitability. Investment in a modern coating line is substantial. The speed of the material can be very high and the adverse consequences of downtime or low quality of the produced material are therefore also very high. Customer requirements for their finished products are also making new demands on the product delivered. New, high capacity, packaging and printing machines require better tinned qualities, the vehicle industry needs to improve fuel economy while keeping safety high, and aesthetic requirements on facades and roofs increase. Read more
Hardening Lines
By heating steel to about 800 degrees, then rapidly cooling it to below 500, austenitic steel is to a large extent transformed to martensitic, thus getting hardened in the process. Keeping the shape of your material when cooling down steel in a hardening Line is a challenge. The balance of cooling fast enough to form Martensite while not introducing crossbow or waviness on your saw-steel, valve-steel, razor blades or other precision strips requires strict control. Shapeline offers this! Read more
Cutting/Finishing/Levelling
The final step of production is to make your product ready for your customer. Cutting, slitting and edge cutting produce the dimensions required by your customers. Levelling is often a part of the finishing process to ensure that finished products have the required quality. We can include also, treatment of the surface through blasting and painting, and the marking of the final product for the activities performed at finishing lines. Read more
Quality Inspection
The word Quality is used in all aspects of life. In our world of metallurgy the traditional meaning was to describe the technical properties of the material – the alloy, the dimension and fulfilment of standards. Now, as in most industries, the word quality is more and more used to describe the ability to meet and exceed customers’ requirements and expectations of the products. Working with quality isn’t just about verifying the fulfilment of standards, but applying fully fledged Quality Management to optimize and maximize the financial result. Read more
Other Processing Lines
Annealing, pickling, quenching, slitting, … many things that you do influence the flatness of your product in one way or the other. Shapeline has gained extensive experience from applications in many types of lines and demanding environments. So far, we have always managed to find solutions. Measurement data is used to control processes - automatically or manually - to trim and develop the processes, as well as document your product for customer and market. Read more
Plate Mills
Plates are getting wider, harder and thinner. These features give flatness ever increasing importance, and a good flatness measurement will not only make a speedy return on investment, it will soon become a standard requirement. However, to measure flatness on plates is in itself a challenge. Waviness in combination with rolls, introduces shape changes that have to be eliminated in hardware and software before an evaluation can be made. When this is mastered, there are great benefits in quenching improvement as well as leveller control and efficiency. Read more
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