A Development of a Metal Detection and Counting System in Vertical Raw Material Pipelines Case Study: Corn Seed Pipeline

Abstract

This research is applied research, reported the case study of problem solving and development of metal detection and counting system for product quality control in the company's feed raw material production line of Wang Manao Kasetphan Co. Ltd. in Ratchaburi Province. The system was capable of detecting metal, counted the amount of metal entering and leaving the production lines, and displayed the amount of metal in the control system via touch screen HMI (human machine interface) and PLC (programmable logic control). It could be controlled together with the original factory system. The experimental results of using the metal detection system in the raw material lines showed that the developed system can count metals with diameter of 1.65, 2.90, 4.10, 7.20, 7.95, 10.00, and 12.90 mm with 100% accuracy. The efficiency of raw material flow was 66.22%, the daily production efficiency was 50%, and the metal detection efficiency was 100%. The overall efficiency was 58.11%. Therefore, this metal detection and counting system developed in this study could also be used in other industries for metal detection.