Electric induction heating and melting furnace refractory life cycle wear imaging and processing

A method of measuring wear of a consumable refractory lining in a crucible of an electric induction furnace for heating and melting materials, the electric induction furnace disposed in a foundry environment, the method comprising:

• performing a series of periodic total consumable refractory wall surface scans, each one of the series of periodic total consumable refractory wall surface scans comprising the sequential steps:
• (a) positioning a laser sensor unit attached to a motion mount offset above a crucible top opening of the electric induction furnace, the laser sensor unit approximately centered over said crucible top opening;
• (b) rotating the laser sensor unit with the motion mount in a vertical two-dimensional consumable crucible refractory surface diameter scan plane;
• (c) performing a plurality of planar beam scans in the vertical two-dimensional consumable crucible refractory surface diameter scan plane for a plurality of consumable refractory surface scan plane wall data points;
• (d) storing the plurality of consumable refractory surface scan plane wall data points in a storage memory device;
• (e) incrementing the vertical two-dimensional consumable crucible refractory surface diameter scan plane by rotation of the laser sensor unit with the motion mount through an incremental scan plane angular rotation (φ) of the laser sensor unit;
• (f) if a sum of the incremental scan plane angular rotations is less than 180 degrees in step (e) perform steps (c) through (e);
• and
• (g) if the sum of the incremental scan plane angular rotations is greater than 180 degrees store the plurality of consumable refractory surface scan plane wall data points for each one of the vertical two-dimensional consumable refractory surface diameter scan planes as one of a series of periodic total consumable refractory wall scan data sets.

A method of measuring wear of a consumable refractory lining surface in an empty hot crucible of an electric induction furnace for heating and melting materials, the electric induction furnace disposed in a foundry environment, the method comprising:

• positioning an imaging assembly having a laser sensor unit and a motion mount attached to the laser sensor unit, the laser sensor unit and the motion mount offset above a top opening of the empty hot crucible with the laser sensor unit and the motion mount approximately centered over the empty hot crucible;
• executing a plurality of sequential two-dimensional planar scans of the consumable refractory lining surface with the laser sensor unit in the empty hot crucible, each of the plurality of sequential two-dimensional planar scans performed by a beam sweep in each of the plurality of sequential two-dimensional planar scans, each of the plurality of sequential two-dimensional planar scans followed by a plurality of radial rotations of the laser sensor unit by the motion mount to generate a refractory lining surface scan raw data set;
• and
• transmitting the refractory lining surface scan raw data set from the laser imaging assembly to a human machine interface for an image processing of the refractory lining surface scan raw data set.