As customer requirements are continuously growing in connection with up-to-date castings, it is essential for firms interested in the international market to use modern fittings and instruments, which serve for high quality controls, even for manufacture control within each manufacturing process. For example, the thermo camera is such a measuring instrument we can use for measuring the thermo loss of the furnace, concluding to the inadequately insulating parts, or can even make the thermo profile of the surface of the die.
In our work, we were analysing the temperature distribution of the die surface by using a thermo camera, during the manufacture of aluminium casting of automotive industry made by high pressure die casting technology. In pressure die casting, spraying the surface of the casting die with detaching material is a really important technological step, and spraying time – as a part of cycle time influencing productivity – is a very significant parameter. The main functions of spraying include cooling the hot surfaces of die halves, lubrication of the moving parts and helping the ejection of the casting. During our analyses we changed the spraying time of the die, and we took temperature distribution photographs of the stationary die plate by a thermo camera. The only function of the analytical method using a thermo camera is to make the differences in temperature, caused by the changes of the spraying time in the die, comparable in a moment in time. The temperatures taken by us are exact, real temperature values of the die, but these are strongly time-dependent and refer to a certain period of cycle time. It makes possible to compare the temperatures of the die surface in different places in a certain moment in time. We elaborated an analytical method, by which it can be decided if the analysis of the thermo photos is a suitable method for examining the effect – on the casting structure – of spraying time of the die.
Fibre Optic FBG Sensors for Monitoring of the Temperature of the Building Envelope