Our customer has a requirement to automate their inspection process of nickel-plated brass fitting collets. The process begins with an operator filling a Alphamation bowl feeder with collets and scans a barcode on their work order. Information taken from the barcode will tell the machine which recipe to cycle. The components are fed down a linear escapement to a bespoke Tik-Tok mechanism, used to separate and feed the collects onto a flat belt conveyor. The collets enter a darkened cell to provide consistent lighting for the Cognex Vision System triggered by a Keyence Fibre optic sensor. Two high-resolution lenses detecting 4 parts per second determines pass or fail components. If a collet fails, an SMC pneumatic arm will remove the components from the line into a lockable reject station via a chute. Pass components will continue to a pass chute into a box, with the pass area capable of holding up to four boxes in buffer locations. Once a box is filled a Zebra scanner will print a packing label to be placed on the correct box by an operator before unload. This system is controlled by a Stemmer indusial PC and 10†HMI.
