Automatic Testing of Cold Rolled and Clad Materials

Since its foundation in 1913 Wickeder Westfalenstahl in Germany has strengthened its market position through organic growth and strategic take-overs, but mainly through product and technology innovations.

Having used Zwick products for many years for quality control testing of cold rolled and clad materials, Wickeder recently added a robotic system to their existing 1478 tensile testing machine. With the integration of an on-line cross section measuring device they are now able to carry out fully automatic tensile tests in accordance with EN10002-1 without the need for much of the traditional operator involvement.

A unique challenge in this project was the need to measure the reduction in area after fracture using a manual method so the robotic specimen handling system returns both halves of the broken specimen to the magazine after the tensile test has been completed.

As with most robotic testing systems it can be integrated into laboratory data management systems, and this allows test results to be viewed, analysed in real-time, and used anywhere in the plant immediately after the test has been completed.