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Development Report:
1. Foreword
Conventional metal melting involved largely manual
execution of required processes that made operating productivity dependent on the skills of individual craftspersons compelled to work under adverse conditions characterized by high temperature and dirty air.
Automating metal melting operations is indispensable
to a market supply of economic products with stable quality. Improving the working environment and introducing
labor-saving features are also expected to help solve labor
shortages plaguing the industry.
We review topics related to energy-saving and laborsaving automation involving medium-frequency induction furnaces.
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mand control.
Temperature accuracy measured by a radiation thermometer deteriorates with increasing fumes and slag covering molten metals. The life of the sheath of thermocouples is less than 100 charges. Technical problems exist for
different methods, and technological developments solving these problems are eagerly awaited.
Simpler methods more widely used include temperature prediction through measurement of electricity consumed, starting with the preparation of estimates of reference total power required by multiplying the weight of
processed raw material by reference melting power unit
requirements (ton/kWh). When reference total power has
been consumed after furnace operation starts, operation
is switched to temperature retention mode to prevent excessively high temperatures from arising (Fig. 3). This is
used in monitoring introduced earlier and is currently the
most widely used automatic melting.
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