Abstract
A discussion is presented of the similarities and differences between the steel and non-ferrous metals industries in their usage of instruments and analogue control systems to assist the production of rolled metals. A major difference between these industries, which dominates their attitude towards computer process control in particular, is the scale and continuity of production. Because of its smaller scale the non-ferrous metals industry is more interested in instrumentation and simple analogue control systems to improve the profitability of existing plant or individual items of new equipment. In addition there are differences and similarities in the detailed use of instruments. To illustrate this four specific examples are discussed briefly: instrumentation in hot rod rolling, recent developments in shape measurement, strip-thickness gauging, and instruments for weighing andfor width and length measurement.
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