Inline Inspection Success Story

Online Editor

Chris McMonigle details an automated architectural panelling inspection system that relies on laser line profilers

Systems integration company Cyth Systems has designed and built an automated board inspection system that is powered via LMI Technologies’ 3D laser line profilers. The system provides inline 3D inspection on architectural wall panelling. It checks for thickness, flatness, defects in Z and many more parameters. This system is ideal for quality control and manufacturing processes because the end user can filter good and bad products in real time on the production line.

The Challenge

A major manufacturer of building materials wanted to add 100% inline dimensional inspection to its manufacturing line. Any visible waviness in the product material surface would be unacceptable aesthetically. Any deviation from expected thickness in the product needed to be caught.

The Solution

Cyth designed two arrays of six Gocators from the 2300 series mounted over and under the production conveyor. These sensors stream the raw sensor data and Cyth developed a custom software program written in LabView using the Gocator software development kit (GDK). This program qualifies the data for specification requirements set by the client and displays the data on an operator friendly graphical user interface.

For this project, each enclosure contained six networked Gocator 2350s and one enclosure contained a master 2410 to connect all 12 sensors. The master 2410 can connect as many as 24 sensors. The Gocator 2350 has a measurement range of 400mm and a field of view of 158-365mm. The X resolution is .15-0.3mm, and the Z resolution is 0.019-0.060mm (for a white surface). With the sensors all connected to the same master, they can be configured together such that they will all be aligned to the same surface. The material scanned in this application was cement boards. The enclosures were mounted above and below the product line to give a true thickness measurement.

Technical Advantage

The Gocator system offers multi-sensor networking capability and generates high-precision 3D scans and accurate measurements. Built-in measurement tools means no extra tool development is required. It’s pre-calibrated, so delivers out-of-the-box scanning and measurement capability. It also offers easy integration with existing factory systems

Kevin Ruckley, director of engineering at Cyth Systems, comments: “Gocator sensors provided the 3D measurement capability required for this inline dimensional measurement application.”

The Result

Cyth Systems provided turnkey system integration services to meet the full needs of the manufacturer and found that the Gocator sensors were the easiest 3D sensor to integrate.

Chris McMonigle is with LMI Technologies

 

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