Smart manufacturing of complex shaped pipe components

Manufacturing industry is constantly improving. Nowadays the most relevant trend is widespread automation and optimization of the production process. This paper represents a novel approach for smart manufacturing of steel pipe valves. The system includes two main parts: mechanical treatment and quality assurance units. Mechanical treatment is performed by application of the milling machine with implementation of computerized numerical control, whilst the quality assurance unit contains three testing modules for different tasks, such as X-ray testing, optical scanning and ultrasound testing modules. The advances of each of them provide reliable results that contain information about any failures of the technological process, any deviations of geometrical parameters of the valves. The system also allows detecting defects on the surface or in the inner structure of the component. (paper)