Automated Machine Vision and Material Handling of Ceramic Buttons

Impetus to Invent

When you have millions of mission-critical items that need to be 100% visually inspected each year, you need machine vision. Invent Automation stepped up to the challenge in a big way. First, we developed a custom hopper and bowl feeder to keep the inspection running at full rate. Next, a line scan camera inspected the outer surfaces of the cylinders and then sent them on their way. As they passed by a rejection chute, they were ejected from the system if the line scan camera found them to be defective. Continuing down the ramp, both sides of the parts were inspected using two cameras. Each side camera took two pictures with different types of lighting to expose chipped surfaces or discoloration. From there, defective parts were rejected, and good parts went on to fill a bag. Our custom auto bagger carousel would index when the bag was full. A lot is going on in a very small package!

Problem Solved

Laborious and error prone visual inspections and bagging processes were replaced with a sophisticated machine vision system and innovative bagging solution.

Lessons Learned

Sometimes just because you can does not mean you should. We originally started out with a gear drive roller system because of the precision we thought we would need but a belt drive system replaced the gearbox and worked just as well and was easier to maintain.

What Was Unique 

Two cameras, four images and making sure they were just offset from each other allowed us to inspect for multiple defect types quickly and efficiently.

What Was Challenging

Getting the buttons to rotate without slippage in front of the line scan camera proved to be a difficult challenge to overcome due to ceramic dust buildup over time. Several tests proved to yield a material that worked very nicely.