Fasteners such as screws, nuts, washers or bolts are often processed automatically, e.g. in production lines of the automotive industry.
A small defect in a part, e.g. a faulty thread or a small crack, can therefore bring an entire production line to a standstill. A 100 percent quality assurance with appropriate high-end devices is therefore essential, and sophisticated sensor technology is also indispensable here.
GEFRA GmbH, based in Friedewald (Westerwald), has specialized in the development and production of optical inspection systems in the fields of measuring, inspecting and sorting production parts made of metal and plastic for more than 15 years. The basic equipment of an inspection system usually consists of a measuring station with three cameras including illumination.
The fasteners to be inspected are fed to the measuring station via a glass turntable. However, since a glass turntable is not absolutely flat or level, but always has a certain amount of radial runout, the detection of particularly flat parts, such as panes, is made considerably more difficult, since the radial runout of the glass turntable can be in the range of the thickness of the pane.
ipf electronic overcame this problem with the development of a special fork-shaped laser light barrier, which enables the reliable detection of even extremely flat mounting elements on the glass plate.
The complete application report can be found in the following PDF file.
