The article focuses on the influence of operator and process safety and the trends of robotics and digitalisation on a ladle slide gate that was introduced to the market 6 years ago[1].After more than 50 installations,customer experience was gathered and new features were added to a system upgrade.These upgrades are related to safety,ease of operation,and low operational costs.Especially a newly introduced“open check”feature increases the confidence level of the operators and can boost performance.With growing requirements to increase safety for people and processes in the ladle preparation area and on the continuous casting floor,automation has become increasingly important in steel plants.A slide gate prototype is currently underway to launch an innovative new gate design striving for full automation.Several critical process steps are already available and successfully used in the steel plants,such as cylinder connection,slag detection integration,and ladle gate preparation area automation.Fully automated operation will be followed by digitalisation,allowing for tracking of performance,safety,and quality.This paper summarises new features available for slide gates and outlines individual initiatives towards fully automated operation and data acquisition examples of digitalisation.
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