Abstract. The system of steel ladles marking used in a number of domestic plants is described. The system shortcomings within the task of automation turnover buckets are identified and illustrated. A typical scheme of movement of the steel ladle in the workshop is considered. A review of existing technical solutions is presented; advantages and disadvantages of the approaches are discussed. The use of traditional graphic labels as well as RFID labels is shown to be unacceptable. A mechanism of alphabet labels is proposed, requirements to the alphabet symbols are defined. The proposed method of marking steel is illustrated by the example of the character set made up of oblique lines; the corresponding values of one bit are used as the ladles numbers. The lines of further research are determined. 

Keywords: vision system, marking casting ladles, automatic reading, enthalpy, automatic entry the buckets numbers, accounting buckets