Automobile Construction: More Flexible Testing And Production
VISION 2012: innovative 2D and 3D camera systems increasing flexibility and efficiency of automobile and component production, and helping to reduce costs
The automotive industry and automotive component suppliers are well-known as driving-forces behind innovation. They often play a pioneering role when there is a need to use advanced machine vision technologies. That’s because their continuous objectives are to improve product quality and reduce production costs – while simultaneously increasing model and component diversity. Although these objectives sound like a balancing act, they can be attained with the aid of innovative machine vision systems and solutions together with new application ideas. Visitors to VISION 2012, International Trade Fair for Machine Vision, will be able to see these products and ideas for themselves in Stuttgart this autumn from 6 to 8 November.
Carmakers and automotive component suppliers belong to the five main visitor target groups on which VISION 2012, the world’s leading trade fair, will focus – in addition to mechanical engineering, the electrotechnical and electronic industries, the machine vision industry itself and medical technology. A survey of visitors at VISION 2011 revealed that around 17 per cent of them came from the automotive industry. And according to the VDMA Machine Vision Group, automobile producers along with their component suppliers are the main customers for machine vision (MV) technologies. They accounted for a quarter of all sales of the German machine vision industry in 2010.
The high quality demands in the production of motor vehicles continuously pose new challenges for manufacturers of machine vision systems. Some exhibitors at VISION 2012 will provide some demonstration examples in this respect: “One of the challenges for modern machine vision systems is to divide complex test tasks into individual intelligent tasks in such a way that users can manage and control them in the production process”, said Hansjörg Hutt, Machine Vision Project Consultant at Festo. In the automotive component supply industry it was necessary to test the correct installation of several rubber grommets on the interior panelling of cars. The problem here was the component size of the panelling in relation to the relatively small rubber grommet and the necessary accompanying sensor resolution. In order to make sure that installation errors could be safely detected, Festo pursued the strategy of adapting the camera’s field of vision to just one grommet instead of the entire panelling part, and moving the camera from test position to test position. The innovation: the camera system positions itself thanks to an integrated PLC and the associated dome illumination system without communicating with the superordinate PLC. “The advantage here”, said Hutt, “is that the small picture detail produces a high resolution and, thus, a high level of accuracy. Homogeneous stable illumination conditions exist, the level of communication with the superordinate PLC is reduced and one PLC for handling is no longer required, which in turn leads to lower costs.”
2D images are increasingly becoming insufficient. This was determined by experts from ISRA VISION (also an exhibitor at VISION 2012) when they had to remove unsorted parts directly from a transport container using a robot and directly integrate them in the production process without a complex mechanical construction. One example of this is automobile body assembly where a robot removes raw material from a container to forge brake discs. “In practice it is no longer sufficient for the robot to always perform the same movement”, said Nicole Rüffer, Marketing Manager at ISRA VISION, “it must be able to flexibly react to other object positions. Solutions involving 2D camera systems often fail due to difficult contrast conditions and the inability to look down”. In this case the exhibitor provides an extremely flexible solution in the form of the 3D SHAPEscan sensor whose special intelligence is found in the sophisticated software. With the aid of two standard cameras and special laser illumination, the sensor precisely determines the position of the individual parts in the box. “Manufacturing companies save substantial costs and valuable production time, and significantly increase the flexibility of their production – with low noise emissions, simple installation and almost without any additional space requirements”, said Rüffer in regard to the advantages.
The automotive industry is also benefiting from innovative smart cameras. Vision Components, an exhibitor at VISION 2012, therefore recommends the VC-nano-3D cameras for quality control and robot guidance. They have been successfully used by EngRoTec–Solutions, for example, on in-line stations during the production process to measure vehicle side parts. “These smart cameras are therefore ideally suitable because they can perform both 2D and 3D test tasks due to their design – laser, camera and intelligence in one housing. As a result, the efficiency of systems has been increased enormously”, said Miriam Schreiber, Marketing Manager at Vision Components. The performance advantage of the smart camera is produced by the integrated processor which processes the recorded image data straightaway. It is therefore possible to eject non-OK parts at the earliest possible point in time. According to Miriam Schreiber, the number of components and, thus, also their maintenance are reduced to a minimum.
“To date machine vision systems have been primarily installed and operated by specialists. In future an increasing number of users will use machine vision solutions without any special knowledge because these technologies are predestined for many other industries besides the automotive industry”, said Rüffer. Intuitive operation, attractive user interfaces and properly functioning automatisms represent challenges for the future. Rüffer added: “Complex parameter settings must be avoided at all cost, whereby the self-learning capability of the systems must become even better.”
VISION 2012 will be extremely exciting because it is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year and all exhibitors will be accommodated under one roof in the high Hall 1 at the Stuttgart Trade Fair Centre for the first time. A gross exhibition area of more than 21,000 square metres will be available to present innovative machine vision components such as cameras, sensors, frame grabbers, illumination systems, lasers, optics, lenses and software, as well as machine vision systems, application solutions and services. Over a period of 25 years, VISION has developed as a presentation and communication platform into the world’s leading trade fair where every key player meets. It is also becoming even more oriented towards users. A varied accompanying programme this year will again help to quench visitors’ thirst for knowledge concerning the latest trends, technologies and practical examples in machine vision.
SOURCE: VISION