DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF A TUBE WALL THICKNESS MEASUREMENT SYSTEM

This paper describes the design and implementation of a gage for measu ring the wall thickness of hot rolled steel tubing at an actual produc tion facility. The design is based upon a statistical analysis of the tube samples, and upon the economic realities of mill operating condit ions. Issues relating to time constraints, uneven sample preparation, a mill operating environment, and differences between gage operators a re addressed The gage records more data from the tubes than could be t aken manually, and therefore allows the accompanying software to apply unique algorithms for the calculation of hexing and eccentricity in e ach sample. All results are recorded and stored in a database for cont inuous use in statistical process control.