Ladle Monitoring AI

Bring real-time intelligence to every ladle in the melt shop with Roboflow Vision AI for ladle monitoring. Built for steel mills and foundries where a thin refractory lining shows up first as a hot spot on the shell, where ladle location lives on a whiteboard, and where a breakout is the most dangerous event in the plant.

Track every ladle:

• Read ladle numbers from cameras at stations and along crane runways, and track each ladle's location through the shop.
• Record ladle cycle steps (tap, secondary metallurgy, caster, dump, preheat) with timestamps.
• Show ladle status and cycle time so the shop runs the right number of ladles in rotation.

Refractory and slag condition:

• Map shell temperature from thermal cameras and flag hot spots that point to thin refractory, tied to the ladle number.
• Trend shell temperature per ladle over its campaign so relines are planned before a hot spot becomes a breakout.
• Detect slag line wear, skull, and build-up at the lip after dumping.

Pouring and people:

• Watch the tap and pour stream for splashing, slag carryover, and abnormal flow.
• Detect people entering molten metal zones during tapping, pouring, and crane moves
• Log every event with a clip for refractory reviews and incident investigations.

Bring intelligence to every ladle today. Stop refractory hot spots and lost ladles from becoming breakouts, delays, and injuries.

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Frequently asked questions

What is ladle monitoring with Vision AI?

Ladle monitoring with Vision AI uses thermal and visual cameras at ladle stations, crane runways, and pour points and a trained computer vision model (opens in a new tab) to read ladle numbers, track each ladle through the melt shop, map shell temperature for refractory hot spots, detect slag and skull build-up, and monitor pouring and people near molten metal. It pairs with overhead crane monitoring and steel coil identification and tracking across the mill.

Can Vision AI find refractory hot spots on a moving ladle?

Yes. A thermal camera at each station or on the crane runway captures the ladle shell as it passes, a model finds the ladle and reads its number, and the shell temperature map is compared to that ladle's own history and to its neighbors in the rotation. A spot that is hotter than it was last heat, or hotter than the rest of the shell, is flagged with the ladle number so the refractory team can act before the next tap.

Does ladle monitoring support ISO 45001 and ISO 50001?

Ladle monitoring supports melt shop safety programs under ISO 45001 (the occupational health and safety management system standard) with records of hot spots and people near molten metal, quality programs under ISO 9001 (the quality management system standard), and energy programs under ISO 50001 (the energy management system standard) by tracking ladle preheat and cycle time.

Roboflow serves as the monitoring engine, and your steelmaking, refractory, and safety teams own temperature limits, reline decisions, and safety procedures.

Can it integrate with our level 2 systems, crane controls, and historian?

Yes. Roboflow sends ladle IDs, locations, temperatures, and alerts over OPC UA, MQTT, or REST (opens in a new tab), or writes them to a database, so they feed melt shop level 2 and MES systems, crane controls through a PLC, and historians such as AVEVA PI and Ignition. Refractory data can be joined with heat logs to see how each ladle wears across its campaign.

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