Performance enhancement through automation had been the talk of yesteryears in the developed countries by and large in the production environment, though the concept gained momentum in the inspection area as well over the last decade. The scenario in India is also slowly changing with the automation reaching maturity levels in the production environment and making beginning in the inspection or metrology areas. The reason is that inspection equipment being a part of QA department was hitherto treated as supporting function with no tangible outputs. However, with the high volumes of production, the inspection loads have drastically increased which requires 24 x 7 operation of CMMs (coordinate measuring machines) and associated instruments. This calls for higher demands for manpower deployment, decrease in loading/unloading times & inspection cycle times, and trouble free operations of inspection equipment round the clock. In this context, of late, the Indian industry is realising the importance of automated inspection and showing positive trends for embracing automated inspection technologies in the coming years.

 

Automated inspection concepts range from simple solutions in the metrology rooms to the complex in-line inspections in the high volume production line. Semi-automatic and fully automatic loading systems are used in both metrology and in-line inspection environment with or without robots. Auto part identification through bar code / QR code or a camera based vision sensor is a feature that is required to instruct the robot or loader to place the part at an appropriate location and select the inspection programs automatically. Segregation (OK / NG) after inspection happens to see that the NG part does not get passed to the next process. Car body inspection solutions involve robots with high resolution vision systems and high speed computers and evaluation software are used for quick inspection of car bodies like inspection of doors and fenders. 

 

Carl Zeiss Industrial Quality Solutions Division has various answers for automated inspection requirements, some of which are showcased in the forthcoming IMTEX 2019 exhibition. The solutions include semi-automatic loading with pallets; automated changeover of parts to/from CMM; integration of CMM in automated production line; automated identification, selection of parts and start of programs; and automated statistics, reports and storing in PiWeb. The company will conduct live demo at its stall (Hall 2B, Stall A-102) at IMTEX 2019.

 

For details, contact C S Mahantesh, Manager – Marketing (Industrial Quality Solutions) of Carl Zeiss India (Bangalore) Pvt Ltd on Tel: 080 4343 8109, Mob: 078990 13547, or email: mahantesh.swadimath@zeiss.com