Parts Inspection on a Feeder Bowl Rail
Challenge
As parts file out of a vibratory feeder bowl to a conveying rail, they must be inspected before they are fed to the next stage of packaging or placement in additional finished components. Feeder bowls are effective in parts orientation, but without additional inspection devices or components they do not provide a means to sort parts that have minor flaws or defects that could create problems or lead to additional scrapped product later in the manufacturing process.
Solution
In this illustration, precision machined bolts have just come out of the feeder bowl and are moving down the feeder bowl rail, conveying to the next automated step. As they move down the rail, a WORLD-BEAM QS18 detects the bolt and sends a triggering signal to an inspection sensor, the iVu Image Sensor. The iVu is configured to detect a flaw in the flange, irregular shape of the bolt head, or other flaws that might be present. The iVu Image Sensor inspects each part and stops the process if it “sees” a bad part, ensuring that the bad part does not move through the automated process.
The iVu Image Sensor incorporates a light, lens, software and touch screen making it an ideal solution for this inspection. With one sensor, the manufacturing engineer can install one component to inspect the part; the integrated touch screen enables inspection setup on the sensor without the use of a PC; the intuitive software is simple to use and requires little training. In this application, the user may select the Match tool, “teach” the sensor to automatically evaluate inspection parameters of a good part, then set a percentage match threshold that a good part meets or exceeds. The iVu will reliably detect any part outside of the inspection parameters.