Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corporation

Takeo Nakata

Kenji Fujiwara

Masami Ikeda

Kazuhiro Uchida

Makoto Sakamoto

An apparatus for determining a kind of a steel material includes an image pickup devicefor imaging a spark, which is produced when the steel materialis ground, continuously a plurality of times; a detection devicefor detecting an alloy spark zone, which corresponds to an alloy spark produced by the grinding of an alloying component contained in the steel material, from each of picked-up imagesimaged by the image pickup device; a calculation devicefor calculating the total number of alloy spark zones detected by the detection device; and a judgment devicefor determining that the steel material consists of a low-alloy steel if the total number is not smaller than a first threshold value, and determining that the steel material consists of a carbon steel if the total number is smaller than the first threshold value.

Apparatus and method for determining kind of steel material

An apparatusfor determining a kind of a steel material detects a spark pixel from a color picked-up imageof a sparkproduced when a steel materialis ground, and detects a pixel, in which the density of any one color component for judgment selected from among RGB color components is low, as a low-density pixel from the spark pixels. The apparatusdetermines that the steel material is a steel material consisting of the high-strength steel if the ratio of the total number of low-density pixels to the total number of spark pixels is not lower than a threshold value for judgment, and determines that the steel material is a steel material consisting of the ordinary steel if the ratio is lower than the threshold value for judgment.

An object of the invention is to provide a material determining apparatus for a steel product and a material determining method for a steel product which can stably and precisely determine a carbon content of the steel product. The invention provides a material determining apparatus for a steel product, which is provided with an imaging device for continuously imaging a spark generated during rubbing the steel product at a plurality of times, a detecting part for detecting spark regions and bursting spark regions from each of the imaged pictures imaged by the imaging device, a calculating part for calculating a total of the spark regions and a total of the bursting spark regions by summing up the numbers of the spark regions and the bursting spark regions detected by the detecting part with regard to each of all the imaged pictures, so as to calculate a rate of the total of the bursting spark regions with respect to the total of the spark regions, and a determining part for determining a carbon content of the steel product based on the rate, and a material determining method for the steel product.

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Osaka, Japan

Takeo Nakata