FEATURE MACHINE VISION SYSTEMS
Vision meets the quality needs of the automotive industry
vision systems are very short, especially when the costs associated with product recalls is taken into consideration. Inspection continues to be one of the most importance uses of vision in the automotive industry, ensuring the quality of components ranging from functional elements such as engines, drives, and chassis components to safety-relevant parts such as brakes, steering, airbags and seat belts. A multitude of electronic components
including cable tracks, switches and displays are inspected with machine vision during production. It is difficult to imagine performing some assembly operations without machine vision, for example, for robot guidance to position and bond windscreens or other guidance tasks such as fitting of doors. While 3D imaging also helps manufacturers meet one of the main indicators of quality, flush and gap alignment.
T
he automotive industry forms a substantial part of the UK economy,
encompassing the entire supply chain from companies that provide parts and components, including major subsystems, to automotive manufacturers themselves. These manufacturers and component suppliers rely increasingly on leading-edge vision technology to validate complex assembly processes. The use of vision also helps the modern quality inspection approach in the industry which is moving away from the traditional view of zero tolerance of any defect, however small, towards differentiating between critical and non-critical defects, those that affect the functionality of the object and those that don’t. In addition to the manufacturing process, industrial vision systems can be used in numerous other applications throughout the lifecycle of vehicle parts and complete vehicles.
DEMANDING QUALITY STANDARDS As one of the world’s most cost-sensitive industries, the automotive sector is also one of the most demanding in terms of product quality and aversion to component failures. With manufacturing systems constantly moving closer towards 24 hour operations, the return on investment timescales for industrial
28 JUNE 2015 | AUTOMATION
Multi-camera inspection stations for brake screw joint inspection
3D Scanning of a car seat mould
VISION THROUGH THE LIFECYCLE Automated inspection is already being used in the early stages of automotive production processes, for example, in the inspection, classification and selection of raw materials. Specific lighting techniques or structured lighting can be used to help expose any typical defects to ensure that defect-free raw metal sheets are used for visible parts of the bodywork, where even the smallest of scratches become very prominent once it has been painted. Metal that has been classified as structurally sound but contains blemishes, can be used on non- visible parts of the vehicle. Beyond the manufacturing phase, code readers can track vehicle shipments and optical character recognition systems can read the VIN (vehicle identification numbers) and number plates. Smart cameras can be used for simple single view applications while PC-based vision systems supporting multiple views around the whole of the vehicle. Other aspects of vehicle material behaviour can also be monitored, for instance high- speed vision systems enable accurate analysis of vehicle behaviour in crash tests to help reduce the impact on passengers in accidents. When vehicles reach their end of life and need to be recycled, vision technology is responsible for reliably identifying and separating materials and routing them to the appropriate recycling stations,
contributing to the reduction of harmful effects to the environment.
VISION TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS The integration of vision technology into complex 24/7 manufacturing processes can pose many practical challenges. As Europe’s largest independent supplier of vision technology and services to industrial OEMs and system integrators, Stemmer Imaging works closely with machine builders, production engineers and systems integrators to provide the vision expertise as well as the component parts to meet the specific requirements. This frequently goes beyond standard
applications to encompass specialist vision technology such as the trevista system that uses specialised illumination and image processing combinations to allow 3D imaging of difficult reflective plastic and metal surfaces. Or the development of an automated system incorporating the trevista system to detect defects of just a few micrometres depth on small-to-micro-components used in fuel injection pumps, lowering scrap rates from around 10 percent to below two percent. Other applications include the use of 3D imaging on the foam production line for car seats prior, automated inspection of car relay and fuse boxes and a 12-camera system for the automated inspection of a variety of parameters on joints used in brake lines.
ULTIMATE AUTOMOTIVE CHALLENGE One extraordinary imaging challenge for Stemmer Imaging has been its ongoing involvement in the Bloodhound SSC project. Bloodhound is the British jet and rocket powered car being built to travel at speeds up to 1,000mph for a new world land speed record attempt. Stemmer Imaging is supplying and integrating up to 25 cameras at strategic points on the car to record video data for both engineering and broadcast purposes in development and during the actual world record attempt, including monitoring the rocket plume. With new camera locations recently added to the vehicle, video transmission has recently been successfully tested at speeds up to 650mph and the camera selection for rocket monitoring finalised.
Stemmer Imaging
www.stemmer-imaging.co.uk T: 01252 780000
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