A Stereo-Vision System for Measuring the Ram Speed of Steam Hammers in an Environment with a Large Field of View and Strong Vibrations

The ram speed of a steam hammer is an important parameter that directly affects the forming performance of forgers. This parameter must be monitored regularly in practical applications in industry. Because of the complex and dangerous industrial environment of forging equipment, non-contact measurement methods, such as stereo vision, might be optimal. However, in actual application, the field of view (FOV) required to measure the steam hammer is extremely large, with a value of 2–3 m, and heavy steam hammer, at high-speed, usually causes a strong vibration. These two factors combine to sacrifice the accuracy of measurements, and can even cause the failure of measurements. To solve these issues, a bundle-adjustment-principle-based system calibration method is proposed to realize high-accuracy calibration for a large FOV, which can obtain accurate calibration results when the calibration target is not precisely manufactured. To decrease the influence of strong vibration, a stationary world coordinate system was built, and the external parameters were recalibrated during the entire measurement process. The accuracy and effectiveness of the proposed technique were verified by an experiment to measure the ram speed of a counterblow steam hammer in a die forging device.