Metal fill profile detection in Lost Foam Casting process using capacitive sensors

Abstract

Electrical capacitive tomography (ECT) provides a simple noninvasive and ruggedized visualization technique for acquiring the metal fill profile in lost foam casting process (LFC) process. The mutual capacitance change caused by variation of the grounded metal inside the target area is measured by using an array of capacitive electrodes mounted around a target area. This paper implements a new technique for determining the metal fill profile. The proposed system has been made wireless and using a limited number of measurements which lower the cost of the hardware. An iterative linear back projection (ILBP) technique for reconstructing the metal images is adapted. Experiments are carried using a LFC simulated environment to test the performance of the system. The proposed method is able to detect the position of the metal using only 6 measurements from the sensors. Reconstructed images for the metal profile show the ability of the proposed system to identify the location and amount of the metal inside the foam pattern.