Patent ID: 8687850
Filing Date: 2014-04-01
Classification: G01N

Abstract:
1. An apparatus for determining the kind of a steel material, comprising: an image pickup device for imaging a spark, which is produced when the steel material is ground, continuously a plurality of times to produce a plurality of color picked-up images; a detection device for detecting a spark pixel corresponding to a spark from each of the color picked-up images produced by the image pickup device, and for detecting a pixel, in which the density of any one color component for judgment selected from among RGB color components is lower than a first density threshold value, as a low-density pixel from the detected spark pixels; a calculation device for calculating the total number of spark pixels and the total number of low-density pixels by summing up the number of spark pixels and the number of low-density pixels of each color picked-up image detected by the detection device, respectively, for all of the color picked-up images, and for calculating the ratio of the total number of the low-density pixels to the total number of the spark pixels; and a judgment device for determining that the steel material is a steel material consisting of a high-strength steel containing an addition agent for improving the steel strength if the ratio is not lower than a threshold value for judgment, and determining that the steel material is a steel material consisting of an ordinary steel in which the addition agent is not contained if the ratio is lower than the threshold value for judgment.