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Available Manufacturing 00 (2018) 000–000
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Procedia Manufacturing 15 (2018) 578–583
Procedia Manufacturing 00 (2017) 000–000
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17th International Conference on Metal Forming, Metal Forming 2018, 16-19 September 2018,
17th International Conference on MetalToyohashi,
Forming, Metal
Japan Forming 2018, 16-19 September 2018,
Toyohashi, Japan
A characterization of quality of sheared edge in fine blanking using
AManufacturing
characterization Engineering ofSociety
quality of sheared
International edge2017,
Conference in fine MESIC blanking
2017, 28-30 using
June
edge-computing
2017, Vigo (Pontevedra),approach
Spain
edge-computing approach
Costing Daniel Trauthfor
models
a,
*, Joachim
capacity Stanke a
, Andreas Feuerhack
optimization in Industry
a
, Thomas 4.0: Bergs b
,
Trade-off
Daniel Trauth *, Joachim
a,
Stanke a
, Andreas
Patrick Mattfelda, Fritz Klockea
a Feuerhack a
a
, Thomas Bergs b
,
between used capacity and operational efficiency
Patrick Mattfeld , Fritz Klocke
Laboratory for Machine Tools and Production Engineering WZL of RWTH Aachen University, Steinbachstr. 19, 52074 Aachen, Germany
a

Laboratory for Machine

a b Tools and
Fraunhofer Production
Institute Engineering
for Production WZL of RWTH
Technology Aachen University,
IPT, Steinbachstr. Steinbachstr.
17, 52074 19, 52074 Aachen, Germany
Aachen, Germany
b
A. Santana , P. Afonso , A. Zanin , R. Wernke
a
Fraunhofer Institute for Production a,* IPT, Steinbachstr.
Technology b 17, 52074 Aachen,bGermany

a
University of Minho, 4800-058 Guimarães, Portugal
b
Unochapecó, 89809-000 Chapecó, SC, Brazil
Abstract
Abstract
In fine blanking the sheared edge’s quality is of major importance. As the sheared edge needs to transmit process forces and
Abstract
In fine blanking
precisely the sheared
align parts, edge’s
attributes quality
like die rolls,istears
of major importance.
and tear-offs needAs
to the sheared edge
be eliminated. needs tothese
Currently, transmit process
attributes areforces and
manually
precisely
determinedalign
at theparts,
endattributes like die
of the process rolls,which
chain, tears makes
and tear-offs need correlation
a complete to be eliminated.
between Currently, thesefactors
influencing attributes are manually
and the attributes
Under the atconcept
determined
hardly possible. theIf end of
it would "Industry
of thebeprocess 4.0",
possiblechain, production
which
to create makes processes
a real-time complete will
a evaluation of thebeattributes,
correlation pushed
between to influencing
not be increasingly
only unknownfactors interconnected,
and the attributes
correlations would be
information
found, also an instant process adaption could be made, optimizing the quality of the sheared edge. Therefore, thisoptimization
hardly based
possible. If it on a
would real
be time
possiblebasis
to and,
create anecessarily,
real-time much
evaluationmore
of theefficient.
attributes, In this
not context,
only unknown capacity
correlations would be
contribution
goes
found,beyond
also an the traditional
instant process aim of
adaption capacity
could
focusses on the development of an edge computing approach. maximization,
be made, contributing
optimizing the qualityalso
of for
the organization’s
sheared edge. profitability
Therefore, this and value.
contribution
focusses on
Indeed, the management
lean development of and an edge computingimprovement
continuous approach. approaches suggest capacity optimization instead of
maximization.
© 2018 The Authors.
© 2018
2018 The
The Authors.The Published
study of capacity
Published by Elsevier
by optimization
Elsevier
B.V.
B.V. and costing models is an important research topic that deserves
©
Peer-review
contributions Authors.
under Published
responsibility byof Elsevier
the B.V.
scientific committee ofthe
the17th
17thInternational
International Conference onMetal
Metal Forming.
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committeeperspectives.
from both the practical and theoretical of This paper presents on
Conference and discusses a mathematical
Forming.
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 17th International Conference on Metal Forming.
model for capacity management based on different costing models (ABC and TDABC). A generic model has been
Keywords: Fine blanking; Sheared edge’s quality; Image processing; Edge computing; Deep learning
developed and it was used to analyze idle capacity and to design strategies towards the maximization of organization’s
Keywords: Fine blanking; Sheared edge’s quality; Image processing; Edge computing; Deep learning
value. The trade-off capacity maximization vs operational efficiency is highlighted and it is shown that capacity
optimization might hide operational inefficiency.
© 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the Manufacturing Engineering Society International Conference
2017.

Keywords: Cost Models; ABC; TDABC; Capacity Management; Idle Capacity; Operational Efficiency

1. Introduction
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +49-241-802799; fax: +49-241-8062799.
* E-mail
Corresponding
address:author. Tel.: +49-241-802799; fax: +49-241-8062799.
d.trauth@wzl.rwth-aachen.de
The cost
E-mail of idle
address: capacity is a fundamental information for companies and their management of extreme importance
d.trauth@wzl.rwth-aachen.de
in modern©production
2351-9789 systems.
2018 The Authors. In general,
Published it isB.V.
by Elsevier defined as unused capacity or production potential and can be measured
in several©ways:
2351-9789
Peer-review 2018 tons
underThe of production,
Authors. Published
responsibility of theby available
Elsevier
scientific B.V.hours of the
committee manufacturing, etc.Conference
17th International The management of the idle capacity
on Metal Forming.
Peer-review under
* Paulo Afonso. responsibility
Tel.: +351 253 510of thefax:
761; scientific committee
+351 253 604 741 of the 17th International Conference on Metal Forming.
E-mail address: psafonso@dps.uminho.pt

2351-9789 © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.

Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the Manufacturing Engineering Society International Conference 2017.
2351-9789 © 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 17th International Conference on Metal Forming.
10.1016/j.promfg.2018.07.280
 Daniel Trauth et al. / Procedia Manufacturing 15 (2018) 578–583 579
2 Trauth et al./ Procedia Manufacturing 00 (2018) 000–000

1. Introduction

Fine blanking is a sheet metal separation process for mass production, e.g. in automotive, aero or medical
industry [1]. In fine blanking, roll-shaped sheet metal strips, known as coils, are fed to a levelling unit by means of a
coiler, see Fig. 1(a).

a) Fine blanking b) Workpiece

Coil system Leveler Press Top surface Scrap

Die roll

Material

Sheared Edge (Tear-offs)

Fig. 1. Systems of fine blanking press (a) and arrow-workpiece (b).

The levelling unit smoothes the material and eliminates internal stress distortion [2]. Following the levelling unit,
the material is fed to the actual fine blanking press by means of a lubrication unit. The fine blanking press uses
triple-acting tools to cut flat metal products from the sheet metal strip. In accordance with the current state of the art,
die rolls or tear-offs on the sheared edge cannot be avoided [3], see Fig. 1(b).

1.1. Economic problem

The objective of fine blanking is the manufacturing of millions and billions of identical parts [4]. Therefore, the
quality attributes of fine blanked parts are analyzed using random samples and optical measuring devices. In Fig.
2(a) the die roll is determined using a Keyence VR 3200 optical microscope and its default software.

a) Measuring of quality attributes b) Material variability

Material thickness / mm
0.74

0.72

0.70

0 500 Coil length / m 2500 3000

Fig. 2. Exemplary measurement of die roll (a) and fluctuations in sheet metal thickness of single coil (b).
580 Daniel Trauth et al. / Procedia Manufacturing 15 (2018) 578–583
Trauth et al./ Procedia Manufacturing 00 (2018) 000–000 3

This process is time-consuming and cost-intensive – even though the measuring process itself is done in
seconds – since measuring cannot be carried out directly on the machine itself. In the industrial environment, it is
therefore not possible to carry out a 100 percent inspection of the component quality [5].
However, a 100 percent check is necessary, as the coil’s material quality does not provide constant mechanical
[6] nor strength properties [7]. For example, Fig. 2(b) shows that the required nominal sheet thickness of 0.7 mm is
generally exceeded, additionally decreases with increasing sheet length (up to approx. 2000 m) and then even shows
a huge discontinuity. This discontinuity is presumably because, in order to maintain the required total length of 3000
m, a further batch was tied to the existing material. Even if this manual connection had not taken place, the further
1000 m show a clear fluctuation of the sheet thickness. Fluctuating sheet thicknesses directly influence the
mechanical balance and promote tool wear. Tool wear then lead to parts with unsatisfying quality attributes.

1.2. Scientific problem

At present, there is no possibility of a 100 percent control during fine blanking, nor is it possible to carry out a
complete process network, so that an individual process set-up is possible. The individual process set-up would
enable an optimum fine blanking process to be found depending on material, ambient or stochastic fluctuations in
order to minimize die roll or tear-offs.

1.3. Objective

The objective of this contribution is to demonstrate a calculation methodology based on a sensor network on an
exemplary fine blanking press, which allows the analysis of the tear-off height of fine blanked parts using methods
of deep learning, digital image processing and GPU computation directly on the machine. Artificial intelligence will
be used in the future to find unknown pattern.

2. Materials and methods

A fine blanking press Feintool XFT 2500 speed served as demonstrator. The XFT 2500 speed is a triple-acting
servo press including coil, levelling and lubrication unit. The 16MnCr5 case hardening steel was used as the
material. The length of the arrow-workpiece should be 31 mm, the width 22 mm and the thickness 6 mm. The die
roll must not be more than 1.3 mm, the value of tear-off must be zero.

2.1. Machine and tool signals

In addition to over 1000 data signals directly from the machine control system, additional analog sensors have
extended the fine blanking tool. The press stroke was determined with 2 displacement sensors Heidenhain ST3078,
the punch force was determined with 4 force measuring sensors Kistler 9041A, the blankholder force with 4 force
measuring sensors Kistler 9021A, and the counterpunch force with a force measuring sensor Kistler 9031A. All
signals were recorded at 10 kHz using National Instruments hardware and Software LabVIEW.

2.2. Additional ambient data signals

Furthermore, a 3-axis acceleration sensor BMA280, a 3-axis gyroscope BMG160, a 3-axis Magnetometer
BMM150, a combined air humidity/pressure/temperature sensor BME280 and an acoustic sensor were mounted on
the lower tool. Accelerometer and Gyroscope were sampled at 2 kHz, Magnetometer at 300 Hz and
humidity/pressure/temperature sensor at 182 Hz.

2.3. Setup of sensor network and a data lake

All signals were fed into a central data lake. For this purpose, a sensor network based on Message Queuing
Telemetry Transport was set up [8], see Figure 3(a), which is an ISO standard publish-subscribe-based messaging
 Daniel Trauth et al. / Procedia Manufacturing 15 (2018) 578–583 581
4 Trauth et al./ Procedia Manufacturing 00 (2018) 000–000

protocol, that works on top of the TCP/IP protocol. Behind the Data Lake is a lambda architecture based on Apache
Hadoop or Spark [9]. The architecture's goal will be to use the data stored in Data Lake to precisely teach new
models and neural networks, which can then be applied to streaming data in real time. The Lambda architecture
relies on 6x DELL R730 servers, which provide 12x 2.2 GHz Intel Xeon E5-2698 v4 processors with 240 cores in
total, 1.52 TB RDIMM 2,400 MT/s RAM, 360 TB HDD and 6x NVIDIA Tesla P100 12 GB GPU cards.

2.4. Setup of edge devices

Furthermore, to allow for a real-time processing of visual streaming data, NVIDIA Jetson TX2 boards have been
used to classify – based on models teached using the lambda architecture – digital images of fine blanked parts. The
Jetson TX2 is an embedded AI computing device, based on the NVIDIA PascalTM-family GPU and loaded with 8
GB of memory and 59.7 GB/s of memory bandwith. Because of its form factors it is easy to integrate at the press.
In a first step, digital images of fine blanked arrow-workpieces were taken under laboratory conditions. For this
purpose, an industrial camera Basler acA4600-7gc with ON Seminconductor MT9F002 and CMOS sensor was
connected to the Jetson TX2 via GigE. The Basler camera has a resolution of 14 MP (4608 px x 3288 px), a sensor
size of 6.5 mm x 4.6 mm and a pixel size of 1.4 µm x 1.4 µm. The low frame rate of 7 fps is 3.5 times faster than the
fine blanking press (max. 2 parts per second) and thus sufficient. The small form factor (L x W x H) of 42 mm x 29
mm x 29 mm enables the camera to be positioned in the immediate vicinity of the cutting process at a later date. The
camera was supplemented by an ultra-compact lens with a fixed focal length of 12 mm and an aperture between
f/1.8 and f/22.

a) Sensor network b) Edge computing approach

Data streams GPU computing

Leveler Press Digital workpiece image

Tear-off Data
Data streams
Measuring data
Machine PC
Edge data lake
Ambient
data Tool data Time and
Control-Panel Acoustics Date
Coil system Leveler Press

Fig. 3. Illustration of sensor network (a) and design of Edge computing infrastructure (b).

3. Approach and results

In the previous chapter the existing sensor network for the collection of the machine, tool and ambient conditions
has been presented. Those conditions represent the process input variables that determine the process output.
Important process output variables in fine blanking are the quality features of fine blanked parts. The core of the
Edge approach is the online detection of those quality features. As an example, the tear-off height is to be extracted
from digital images. If this information is known for a specific operation, a real-time correlation between process
input and output variables can be established for the first time. Ubuntu LTS 16.04 and Python on the Jetson TX2
was set up as the programming environment. For image processing, OpenCV library has been used. OpenCV is a
widely used open source library for image processing that features image operations from simple to very complex
ones [10]. The methodology is based on two steps. In a first step the image background must be eliminated, see Fig.
4(a), in a second step the tear-off can be detected, see Fig. 4(b).
582 Daniel Trauth et al. / Procedia Manufacturing 15 (2018) 578–583
Trauth et al./ Procedia Manufacturing 00 (2018) 000–000 5

3.1. Extraction of background

After reading the image from file with the OpenCV library, the color image was converted to grayscale image
using the cv2.cvtColor() function. Thresholding then makes it possible to convert the grayscale image into a binary
black and white image. The thresholding was based on the method according to Otsu [11]. Black was used for the
background, white for the workpiece, see Fig. 4(a). To remove the image noise and to create a continuous closed
white workpiece surface, a morphological transformation was performed using cv2.morphologyEx(). Now it is
possible to calculate a bounding box around the workpiece to find the corner points of the intersection and eliminate
the background.

a) Extracting of sheared edge b) Detection of tear-offs

Original image Original image

After thresholding to gray After thresholding to binary

After morpholic transformation After morpholic transformation

Extracted sheared edge Tear-off height: ℎ = 62 px

Fig. 4. Illustration of Tear-off-algorithm. Firstly, elimination of background (a), then calculation of tear-off height (b).

3.2 Calculation of tear-off height

The procedure from step 1 is almost identically used to calculate the tear-off height, see Fig. 4(b). By means of
thresholding, but this time not according to the method of Otsu, but conventionally using a threshold value of 130,
the color image of the sheared edge was converted into a grayscale and then binary black and white image. Black
was chosen for defects, white for the clean cut.
Die rolls, tears and tear-offs are already clearly visible to the human eye. To remove the noise, a morphological
double transformation was performed. First an erosion and then a dilation procedure was performed, then the same
again backwards. Erosion was used to remove pixels, dilatation to sign the contour. The resulting image clearly
separates the die roll and the tear-off from the clean cut surface. The height of the tear-off is then calculated by
determining the highest and the smallest black colored pixels.

4. Discussion and outlook

This paper presented a concept for the complete networking of a fine blanking press Feintool XFT 2500 speed
and the real-time analysis of the workpiece geometry. Although the work is still in its infancy, it has already been
shown that modern embedded AI devices can be used to perform GPU computing in the machine room.
 Daniel Trauth et al. / Procedia Manufacturing 15 (2018) 578–583 583
6 Trauth et al./ Procedia Manufacturing 00 (2018) 000–000

In the future, however, it will be necessary to increase the robustness of the images taken and algorithms
developed under laboratory conditions to such an extent that they will function reliably under harsh industrial
conditions (low light ratio, oblique shooting angles, and dirty surfaces). This is the only way to ensure that unknown
process patterns and new cause-effect relationships between input and output parameters can be found in fine
blanking.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) within the excellence cluster “Integrative
Production Technology for High-Wage Countries”. Many thanks to Erik Fleischhauer, Tim Fleischhauer, Hendrik
Gruss, Merlin Marek, and Birger Nordmann for their valuable input.

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