AUTOMOTIVE


and 200kHz. Blackbird Robotersysteme has sensors that can track seams at welding speeds of up to 8m/min. Te system images through the


scanner optics coaxially. It is also able to scan the workpiece aſter welding to get a height profile of the weld seam for a quality assessment and documentation. ‘It’s very complex; we’re talking


about on-the-fly welding with a six-axis robot, 3D scanner plus the OCT. It’s not a turnkey product yet; we’ve got customers working on it,’ Bautze said. Blackbird Robotersysteme first


showed OCT for laser welding in 2015. ‘Tere are not too many people able to work with remote laser welding, because it requires a lot of resources,’ Bautze added. ‘Tese companies have been


working on this for four years and the first real business cases will be shown to the customers in one or two years – real applications and not just lab applications. It’s


not just the OCT technology; it’s integrating OCT into the machine, the welding process, the customer, the workpiece – it’s a big deal for everyone involved in implementing it,’ he said.


Worth its weight Aluminium is now a much more common material in modern vehicles, not just in car doors, but in many other die-cast parts designed to reduce weight, such as engine components, transmission housings, and chassis parts. German system builder,


VisionTools Bildanalyse Systeme, has developed a 3D stereo camera system to measure the geometry of die-cast components at the Mercedes-Benz plant in Esslingen-Mettingen. Te system is mounted directly in the production line, with a robot picking up and positioning complex parts, such as cylinder heads in front of the camera, to make the measurements.


Die-cast runner beans in 3D grey value levels Te system uses a 3D stereo


camera from IDS, the Ensenso N35, along with a built-in light pattern projector to increase imaging accuracy. Image acquisition and processing takes between 0.3 and 1.2 seconds per component position. Since the distance and viewing


angle of the two lenses, as well as the focal length of the optics, are known, the Ensenso soſtware can


The imaging


system meant the robot was able to grip each part every two minutes, as opposed to five or six minutes without vision


convert differences into known lengths by triangulation. It can determine 3D coordinates of the object point for each individual image pixel, and merges them into a 3D point cloud of the component. Te Flex View projection


Machine terminal with direct inspection results of 3D data of a die cast cylinder head 24 Imaging and Machine Vision Europe • August/September 2019


technology integrated in the N35 model increases the accuracy of the measurement result. Te position of the projector mask in the light beam can be shiſted linearly in very small steps.


Consequently, the projected texture on the surface of the component also moves and creates an additional structure to help with the reconstruction. Acquiring multiple image pairs with different textures of the same object scene produces a lot more image points, resulting in increased resolution. In addition to the resolution, the robustness of the data on difficult surfaces also increases, as the shiſted pattern structures apply additional information to shiny, dark or reflective surfaces. Another big use of vision


technology in highly automated car production lines is robot guidance. An automobile manufacturing plant in China was able to improve robot handling of large parts by installing Teledyne Dalsa Genie cameras to guide the robot gripper – the imaging system meant the robot was able to grip each part every two minutes, as opposed to five or six minutes without vision. New production lines for


electric vehicles will require new automation solutions, which will involve robotics and machine vision. With the big auto makers ramping up for large- scale e-mobility production, the automotive market continues to be a leading user of vision technology. O


@imveurope www.imveurope.com


VisionTools Bildanalyse Systeme and IDS


VisionTools Bildanalyse Systeme and IDS


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40