Castev 1.0

November 2013 - August 2018 (5 years) --- Team (3)

CASTEV 1.0 is a system that tracks the ladle's temperature and stirring and suggests the operator at which temperature should the ladle be sent in order to achieve quality products and avoid nuzzles and clogging in the casting machine. CASTEV also had a sister software tool, ECOSIFC , that guided the operator through the process of adding the correct materials in the correct time. I worked on both of them

Main contributions:

Software developer
UI designer. I was in charge of creating the interface the system would use, but also the look and feel of it.
Quality Assurance

Castev: Texto

Here I'm displaying all the process and different stages the screen went through and the final design I left in September 2018.

This was the first wireframe designed for Castev 1.0 . The most important challenge in this project was the overwhelming amount of data we had to display in a single screen while operators are busy handling the machines in the steelmaking plant.

In this screen I added the color scheme to the screen for the first time.
Dr Eloy (our team's leader and boss) was inspired by psy-fi movies and wanted me to develop a screen similar to "Jarvis" from Iron Man. I played with blues and greens to achieve that feel but I tried to keep it simple.
The main sections of the screen were as follows:

1.- The ladle's main information panel: Here is the typical batch data like date, number of heat, steel grade's name and process time.

2.- The temperature panel: Current and suggested temperatures are displayed. I also intended to put a bar that visually represented how much was the operator outside of the temperature range.

3.- The stirring panel: Current stirring and suggested stirring is displayed in here. Also, we displayed if the arc was turned on or off.

4.-Chemical composition panel: The target and current chemical composition are shown here. It outlights in a different color the elements that are outside of the target's range.

5.- Pentagon graphic panel: Here is a visual summary of the heat's (also known as ladle or batch) current situation.

In this screen, I started to polish some of the most important data. I added colors to highlight the data and organize it in a way that was easy to read. I also used colors and shapes to explain the functionality of the pentagon graphic visually. If the graphic triangle was complete and green it meant the process was followed according to the CASTEV and ECOSIFC guidelines. If it was yellow incomplete it meant something was missing (ingredients, time, etc) if it was complete and orange that meant the process was done for too long or additional materials were added to the batch.

This was Dr Eloy's notes and feedback for the screen. We decided to simplify the information for the stirring parameters Flow and Pressure. We got rid of the time output and replace this information in a pop-up window that the operators had to acknowledge before continuing. We also added the Continuous Casting Machine Remaining Time. This information was very important to the operators to know how much time they got in the Ladle Furnance to send the batch on time.

Second wireframe delivered.

I added the color scheme to the screen, added icons and polished all the output textbox and sections.

Here is the last screen I designed for CASTEV 1.0.

In the last version I worked we added buttons so the operators could type the require temperature if they knew it, add aditional information data like the ladle's number (in case we didn't have access to it from their system's level 2) and a "Require SDT" button which allows the user to obtain an automatic temperature suggestion even when the ladle process has just started.

The interface here is a screenshot from an actual running test of CASTEV 1.0 in 2019. This was the final product developed and look.

Castev: Trabajo