Magnetic rope testing - ROTEC GmbH via Smartdings
ROTEC Roper
2024 - present
Overview
The ropes that carry a ropeway fail from the inside, where nobody can see the damage. ROTEC’s device finds that damage magnetically, scanning the rope as it runs through - no cutting, no guessing. This is the app the inspector works in: run the scan, read the trace, mark the damage, sign off the report. Built at Smartdings GmbH for ROTEC GmbH in Stuttgart, where I work on the front end.
Stack
Core
- React
- TypeScript
- MobX
- Redux
Signal & charts
- D3
- ApexCharts
- Recharts
- Canvas
Interface
- Material-UI
- styled-components
- react-window
- i18next
Reporting
- react-pdf
- docx-templates
- SheetJS
Quality
- Jest
- React Testing Library
- GitLab CI
- Docker
What I built
- 01Work across the React and TypeScript app the inspector uses, from setting up the device at the rope to the finished report.
- 02Built the compare view, the hardest part of the job. A rope stretches as it ages, so the same flaw sits at a different metre mark on every scan. Pick two landmarks the inspector recognises on both and the older trace is rescaled onto today’s, marks and all, so the two line up and the damage can be watched growing.
- 03Made the measurement graph smooth to scroll through. A rope scan is millions of readings, so the D3 viewer only draws the stretch you are looking at, at the detail you need.
- 04Built the rope image viewer: a camera photographs the rope every half a millimetre as it is scanned, and the app shows the picture for whatever point on the graph is being looked at.
- 05Reports come out as PDF, Word, Excel or JSON, generated in the app itself with no server involved.
- 06Added automated tests with Jest over the measurement maths - the part you cannot check by looking at it - so old bugs stopped coming back.