Overview:

RobotScan E0505, a fully automatic 3D scanning system, was utilized by a company to perform the automatic batch inspection of cooler covers of the car engine.

Background:

The traditional method is to use a coordinate measuring machine (CMM) to conduct random inspection over a batch of parts in the mass production of metal parts. However, this kind of inspection is disadvantaged in a very low efficiency and incapable of improving the production process. Thus the company was urgently looking for a method that could inspect 120,000 parts in one year and meet the high-accuracy requirement of measurement.

Inspection requirements:

Inspection items included planeness, hole aperture, the distance between two holes, location degree, and four sides lateral distance, etc. The precision was required to reach 0.025mm, and extremely high repeatability shall be realized. 

1. Plan the inspection process

The engineer shall design the inspection process prior to batch inspection. The engineer firstly fixed the workpiece with markers on the turntable and then set the motion path, scanning angle, and other scanning parameters of the mechanical in the software. After all things set up, the first part could be scanned.

Upon completion of scanning and inspection for the first part, 10 key dimensions were obtained.  And then imported the 10 key dimensions into Geomagic Control X software to make an inspection data template. 

2. Batch inspect and generate reports

The engineer began the batch inspection for parts after the template was done. The average scanning time per part was about 1.45mins, while it cost almost 20min through CMM method. 

Upon completion of inspection over every part, a report of the part would be automatically generated in Geomagic Control X software.  Once the inspection of all part was finished, an error variation trend report could be generated in software. The user optimized the production process flow based on the report where main errors of parts frequently appeared.

Advantages

• High efficiency

     Using the RobotScan E0505 automatic scanning system, the scanning time per part was turned from 20mins to 1.45mins, which made it possible to inspect 120,000 parts in a year.

• High precision

     Meet the requirement of 0.025mm from the customer.

• Save manpower

     As a fully automatic scanning system, there was no need to measure manually. So it saved the labor cost as well as avoiding the errors caused by human factors.

4,  Optimize the production flow

    The production process flow could be improved and optimized timely base on the batch inspection report, thus increasing the qualified rate of the product.