IPD Technical ConferenceFebruary 19th 2008

Cable Disk Inspection

Phase I The Need

Customer has no vision experience and wants to establish a method to judge their manufacturing process. To their knowledge, they do not have a severe breakdown in quality, but know that there are some issues that they want to look at and correct .

The customer wants to establish a vision system that not only meets their basic needs in the beginning of their vision inspections, but can grow into the more challenging inspection chores without changing the software package

Phase I The Need

Customer wants to mount the camera system on an enclosure that could be raised by the operator to inspect the cable strands. After doing so, lower the camera system to a fixed point of inspection without readjusting the camera system.

Finally and not the least, the Customer wanted to take “Ownership” in the use of the software in the application. This has to be a tool that the Customer can easily use and change as they see fit and not have to call ATI every day.

They want the vision system to be flexible enough to allow them to innovate methods to gain more QC information.

Phase I the Need

Customer needs to verify quality of product, ie the correct spacing of plastic disc molded on the cable.

Customer wants to measure the distance between each disc to verify the proper placement at time of molding plastic on the cable.

Customer wants to identify that the complete disc is attached to the cable.

Customer wants to check that plastic molded on the cable has not extruded onto the cable from the disc area during the molding process

Phase I The Need

Below are the disc attached to the wire strands

Note the disc and the base of plastic at the center

Phase II Due Diligence

Light study indicated that a back light gave the best results for measurements

Customer at first wanted only 1 camera to do all 12 strands

ATI did study with IPD vision lab equipment viewing all 12 strands with 640 x 480 camera at distance of 30” with 8mm lens

The image resolution was poor for 12 strands

After taking ATI lab camera to customer and taking images, established 2 640 x 480 cameras with 8mm lens, 20” from 6 strands;

Phase II Due Diligence

Improved resolution but after running tools on images, see that the tools slip from points selected and give false alarms.

Used 2 640 x 480 cameras with 6mm lens and moved to 14” distance from cables to obtain 6 strands view.

Resolution greatly improved allowed sample inspection tool to adhere to objects/points selected

Took many images of cable to load into laptop demo to establish approximately what to expect from live action in production of cable

Due Diligence Modified image removing disc parts

Phase II Due Diligence

Used Paint to change images to provide simulated movement to better judge the action of the locator tool and inspection tool.

Attention was paid to what constituted a perfect image to judge the balance of the manufacturing of their products.

The Strands move right to left as the injection mold machine applies the plastic to the metal strand.

Will use the opening of the die molds (electrical output) as the inspection trigger.

Regardless of the speed of different cables the inspection will occur as the disc move 1 disc at a time.

The finial view of the application

Modified image removing disc parts

Phase II Due Diligence

As shown below the disc have runners attached at time of inspection; these runners had to be omitted or restricted while the inspection was being accomplished

Phase II Due Diligence

The omitting of the “Runners” during Inspection was accomplished by reducing line sensitivity

The finial view of the application

Phase III The Solution

Used the distance tool and connected it to the left side of the disc inspecting to the left side of the adjacent disc.

Ran the application on the laptop demo and noted that the tool would not adhere to the sides of the disc during movement. Obtained many fault alarms.

Used match tool because of 4 features

Phase II The Solution

Phase III The Solution

A. to identify disc if not fully applied to the cable

B. To provide center point to measure from disc to disc. Plus this inspection tool easy to copy and use on other strands.

C. The match tool is “scored” in % of match. Was a better tool than using an Intensity tool which was a Pixel intensity evaluation.

D. The match tool was easy to copy.

After applying the Match Tool with CENTER POINT on the Disc, then applied the distance tool between the 2 center points to provide measurement.

Phase III The Solution

Phase III The Solution

Fabricated a Control Cabinet with included a VA40, 3 camera capacity. The customer wanted to have a 3 solution capability because they run 3 different cable style. Therefore, we included a 3 position selector switch to operated in digital fashion and select solutions “00”, “01” and “02”. Then depress the selection button to change solutions. Also included in this cabinet on the outside, are 2 USB ports to plug their Keyboard and Mouse to change solutions.

A Monitor Screen will be mounted independently and separate from the Control Box.to monitor inspection

Phase IV Commissioning the Solution

Installed control box and fabricated framework to support the 2 cameras.

After applying the match tool and distance tool on one strand, Ran the application and noted that we got quite a bit of false alarms from the match tool.

Noting that there was not only left of right movement of cable but some vertical movement in cable as well

This caused the match tool to bounce into it’s “search box”. Expanded the “search box on the Match Tool; ran the application again and that eliminated the false alarms.

Phase IV Commissioning of Application

Phase IV Commissioning the Solution

Applied the tools of inspection on top strand and ran application. Began to tweat the solution to get the results we wanted.

After applying tools to strand 1, added strand 2 and evaluated.

Applied solution to strands in this slow method so as not to overwhelm the application with massive faults.

After running 2 top strands, found defect of reduced spacing between disc. Customer amazed. Did not think that it could happen.

Current performance of this solution is 99-100% repeatability.

Phase IV Commissioning the Solution

Phase V Customer Training

During the Due Diligence of the application customer worked with us to understand the use of the inspection tools. However his understanding was minimal but his interest was high.

Spent 6 hrs in defining the image and the theory of applying the tools to inspect. Defined other tools and application to give inspection information other than what the customer required in the beginning

The End

End