Finkl is an industrial steel manufacturer of custom, high quality steel parts for other industries (stamp molding for auto, aircraft landing gear, die steel for other manufactures, etc) The company... Show moreFinkl is an industrial steel manufacturer of custom, high quality steel parts for other industries (stamp molding for auto, aircraft landing gear, die steel for other manufactures, etc) The company performs the entire process from smelting the steel, casting and forging, heat treating, and machining of their parts. Currently in their heat treatment process at Finkl, approximately 10% of their parts that are below company quality standards. Finkl has no efficient way of tracking where specific parts are in relation to each other while in the furnace. So when a part comes out below standards, it is hard to trace back where that part was in the furnace and why it was not treated properly. Finkl has enlisted the help of IIT students, which plan to implement a software program that Finkl can use to create a virtual furnace with the parts that will be heat treated and their specific locations in the furnace. When parts come out below quality standards, the program would allow Finkl to examine the location of the parts within the furnace and determine the reason for sub-par quality. The previous semester IPRO was able to develop a software program that displayed the different Finkl shapes; however, the program only displays a single shape at a time without the ability to move or resize the shape. They were also able to model about half of the Finkl shape codes in ProE. . When a large number of parts fail, they must be retreated to meet company quality standards. Taking the time to retreat the process takes both time and money away from the company. If we can help to identify the cause of the heat treatment failure, this would save the company a large amount of money each year. To be able to determine the cause of the heat treat failure, the team hopes to develop a visual database of the furnace layout to help track parts location within the furnace. Show less
