Software package enables Yokogawa's Daqstation paperless recorders to produce Nadcap survey reports, used in aerospace and automotive to assess furnaces used for the heat treatment of metals
Nadcap (National Aerospace and Defense Contractors Accreditation Program) is a worldwide co-operative programme of major companies designed to manage a cost-effective consensus approach to special processes and products and to provide continual improvement within the aerospace and automotive industries.
It achieves these aims by developing a world-class special processor supply base for the global aerospace industry using a cost-effective industry managed accreditation process.
Nadcap's AMS2750: Pyrometry (Revision D) is the key standard to which heat-treatment suppliers have to conform.
This specification covers pyrometric requirements for thermal processing equipment used for heat treatment.
It covers temperature sensors, instrumentation, thermal processing equipment, system accuracy tests, and temperature uniformity surveys.
These are necessary to ensure that parts or raw materials are heat treated in accordance with the applicable specification.
In particular, it places tight constraints on temperature control and uniformity of heat-treatment furnaces, and requires comprehensive survey reports as part of its audit process.
The ability of the Yokogawa Daqstations to continuously monitor and store multiple process variables, coupled with their ease of interfacing with PCs running customised software, means that they are well-suited to this type of application.
These capabilities are backed up by comprehensive display and archiving facilities which allow survey reports to be created in the appropriate format to meet the requirements of Nadcap auditors.
In operation, the PC-based software produces a report based on a number of files from the Daqstation, incorporating detailed test data along with a overview of parameters such as minimum and maximum temperatures over a preset period of time, maximum overshoot for each thermocouple, time taken for the first to the last thermocouple to be within the required specification and 'pass/fail' indication with out-of-specification units highlighted in different colours.
Reports can be customised in a variety of ways, including users adding their own templates which can include a schematic of the furnace layout.
"Accreditation of production processes is becoming increasingly widespread in a variety of industries, and Yokogawa's track record in sectors as varied as petrochemical, pharmaceutical and automotive means that we are well-placed to provide this type of support", comments David Jones, UK product sales manager for Yokogawa's Network Solutions Division: "The success of our efforts can be judged by the fact that a Nadcap qualified auditor in the UK has seen our report and has indicated that it produces exactly what is required".
