COLLABORATIVE ROBOTS ROADSHOW

In the powdered metal industry, machine vision is being used for defect detection. Defects can include anything from missing teeth on a gear, to detecting debris on an item after it is manufactured. A large amount of powdered metal products are supplied to the automotive industry, which has very stringent quality requirements. This high level of quality control makes defect detection an important part of both the manufacturing and packaging processes.

TRACEABILITY

Traceability is another large aspect of business in the powdered metal industry. When parts are being sent to automotive companies, they require permanent marks — whether they are 2D codes or human-readable serial numbers. This allows the parts to be tracked for recall purposes. Cameras are used to scan the codes — or read the serial numbers — and record them in their database for future referencing.

VISION GUIDED ROBOTS

Vision guided robots are also becoming more and more prevalent in machine tending applications and packaging in the powdered metal industry. When placed with a robot at the end of a line, the machine vision will be able to detect the part and tell the robot where it is located so that it can package it in box. On the same topic, the robot can use the coordinates of the part to perform finishing processes with a CNC machine.

Collaborative robots are starting to be used with machine vision to complete inspections by either moving the camera or moving the part in front of the camera. The ‘cobot’ then sorts the parts based on a signal that is sent from the camera.

EXAMPLES OF MACHINE VISION

Below are a few examples of machine vision that we have installed in the past:

Good Part


Bad Part


OCR


Barcode Reading

For more information on our machine vision products and solutions, contact The Proud Company. To request a quote, contact Inside Sales at The Proud Company at 412.838.0230.