ALD Vacuum Technologies GmbH from Hanau is one of the world’s leading suppliers of vacuum technologies. The company develops innovative digital solutions under the ALD EXPERT brand to ensure consistently high production quality while keeping the effort and costs for quality assurance to a minimum. One example is the in-house camera-based quality assurance system, which ensures considerable savings when used in coating systems.
The Challenge: Extensive and costly quality assurance due to high requirements and proof obligations
Continuous monitoring and optimization of production processes is a major challenge in mechanical and plant engineering. Companies like ALD are constantly striving to maximize the efficiency of their systems while ensuring high product quality. This requires continuous process monitoring in order to detect anomalies at an early stage and take measures to prevent failures.
An important aspect is the proof obligation that companies in the mechanical engineering sector must comply with. Particularly in regulated industries such as the automotive and aviation sectors, companies must provide comprehensive documentation that their production processes comply with high quality standards and legal requirements. This means that every single phase of the production process must be fully verifiable and traceable.
One example: Titanium turbine blades for aircraft engines are coated with a micrometer-thin ceramic layer in coating plants. As a result, the blades used in the engines can withstand higher combustion temperatures. This also reduces the noise level and kerosene consumption of the engine. To do this, the ceramic is bombarded with an electron beam. This vaporizes the ceramic. The turbine blades are then moved back and forth translationally and rotationally in this vaporization cloud in order to obtain a homogeneous thin ceramic layer.
The quality requirements in such a special business case are extremely high – as are the costs of a defective production batch due to coating errors.
Traditional methods often reach their limits, as they cannot offer the flexibility and precision required in modern production environments. Without the use of modern digital solutions, this is often associated with considerable manual effort and high error rates, which in turn can impair production efficiency. In the above-mentioned application, the operator had to observe and control the evaporation process of the material through a small viewport during the entire eight-hour shift (in three-shift operation).
The solution: Camera-based process monitoring and AOS image recognition system
As the world’s leading manufacturer of vacuum technology systems in the field of metallurgy and heat treatment, ALD Vacuum Technologies employs around 900 people in ten countries. The company sets standards with innovative products, state-of-the-art technology, comprehensive service and maximum flexibility. As a supplier of equipment and systems for the thermal and thermochemical treatment of metallic materials in solid and liquid form, ALD is one of the market leaders in the steel industry. The company’s portfolio ranges from in-depth knowledge of vacuum process technology to the design of customized system solutions for use in this area.
To meet the challenges of its customers, ALD Vacuum Technologies has developed a range of digital services and solutions under the ALD EXPERT brand. ALD has developed a camera-based process monitoring system and a special image recognition system, the ALD EXPERT – Advanced Observation System (AOS), for the aforementioned application, the evaporation process. Cameras continuously monitor the processes and use modern analysis techniques and algorithms to detect deviations and anomalies at an early stage. The process videos are displayed in real time for the system operator via a monitor. As the anomalies detected by the algorithm are displayed directly in the live videos, this allows the user to keep an eye on the production process at all times and intervene immediately if necessary. The process videos are stored in a database with a corresponding time stamp and batch number, which significantly reduces the documentation effort and at the same time improves the traceability of the production steps.
Modern production processes generate enormous amounts of data from various sources, such as sensors, cameras and machine controls. ALD EXPERT relies on a combination of on-premise solutions and open source software to collect and process the relevant data. Technologies such as InfluxDB are used here to store time series data, which allows efficient querying and processing of large volumes of data. Python-based analysis tools are used to filter and clean the raw data and convert it into usable information. This information is then visualized in real time on Grafana dashboards, allowing users to monitor production processes intuitively and interactively.
An important part of the ALD solution is the company’s own ALD EXPERT GRID platform: this makes it possible to combine data from different sources, such as the PLC or various sensors, and analyze it on a common platform. The ALD EXPERT GRID not only facilitates the collection and processing of data, but also provides a robust infrastructure for the integration and scaling of applications. The platform runs either virtualized on the customer’s server; alternatively, it can also be operated on a small industrial PC in the system’s control cabinet.
A major advantage of ALD EXPERT’s solutions is their open architecture: it allows them to be easily installed in existing systems and enables a wide variety of data sources and systems to be seamlessly connected with one another, thus ensuring comprehensive data acquisition and analysis.
The result: Increased production quality with reduced costs
The implementation of these digital solutions has brought ALD’s customers considerable benefits to date. Thanks to the early detection of anomalies and the ability to change parameters in the system process in good time, system downtimes have been significantly reduced. This has not only helped to increase production capacity, but also to avoid costly downtime. Real-time monitoring and detailed data analysis also led to a significant improvement in production quality. Customers benefit from the consistently high quality of their products, which in turn strengthens their competitiveness. The automated quality assurance documents also facilitate compliance with industry standards and regulations, which for many companies is an essential prerequisite for market access.
ALD EXPERT is continuously working on the further development of its digital solutions. The focus is always on adapting to the customer’s specific requirements. The vision is clear: ALD uses innovative technologies to help its customers increase their competitiveness and sustainably improve production.
