The Final Inspection Line (FIL) for railroad wheels was designed to perform acceptance testing of railroad wheels with full-profile mechanical surface treatment in accordance with Russian and International standards (GOST 9036-88, GOST 10791-2004, ISO 1005-6-94).

Within the framework of this project SME Tomsk Electronic Company being a General Contractor provided the following services:

• Technical requirements generation for process units of the line
• Process plan development including construction task preparation
• Designing PCS, data communications networks, video control systems and dispatch systems
• Selection and process units supply in accordance with the technical requirements worked out and approved by the Customer
• Development of construction documentation and manufacture of the equipment for conveying system
• Installation supervision and commissioning including connection with the ultrasonic unit supplied by the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Research

Introduction of Wheels Final Inspection Line enabled:

• Increasing the annual capacity and improving products quality
• Fully automating railroad wheels acceptance test cycle
• Changing-over to production of railroad wheels in accordance with the relevant worldwide standards
• Information tracking and forming a full electronic certificate of the wheel with the records of all parameters and properties of the wheel (paint quality, roto-blast hardening, internal structure etc.) and control of its travel along the handling line
• Integrating data transmission system and the existing shop network for creation of the unified data transmission infrastructure for the entire shop floor. This network combines such applications as: data file transfers, video transmissions, and digital speech communications

Final Inspection Line data

The automated inspection line executes the following technical functions:

Preparation of wheels for acceptance testing:

• Chemical treatment of the wheel surface

Transporting individual wheels on the sector processing chain:

• Un-stacking and handling of individual wheels along the transportation line
• Wheel handling and tilting
• Handling of wheels for process operations
• Preparation of wheels for overhead crane transportation (stack assembly, or stacking into holder)
• Stack assembly of discarded (unacceptable) wheels

Performance of acceptance process operations:

• Identification of wheel marking
• Control of wheel geometry parameters (optional)
• Visual inspection for surface defects and wheel geometry
• Ultrasonic inspection for internal flaws
• Magnetic particle inspection of the wheel surface for surface connected flaws (random, up to 50% - 175,000 wheels/year)
• Control of residual voltage (optional)
• Hardness testing of the wheel rim butt-end (single point)
• Wheel check by customer representatives

Additional technical operations:

• Roto-blast (shot blasting) treatment of wheel disks to improve endurance and strength
• Anticorrosive protective coating of wheels

Information tracking of railroad wheels acceptance test:

• Control of handling operations
• Compilation of wheel certification
• Display of operational data at workstations
• Assembly of test/acceptance information databases
• Diagnostics/testing of test equipment functionality