Largest Automation Supplier in Japan Chooses Cognex As Its Vision Partner

NATICK, MA, August 28, 2008–Cognex Corporation (NASDAQ: CGNX) announced today that it has signed an agreement with Mitsubishi Electric Corporation to jointly develop and market Cognex vision products to Mitsubishi’s customers around the world.  Mitsubishi Electric, based in Tokyo, Japan, is a leading worldwide provider of factory automation products (e.g. programmable controllers, motion controls and industrial robots), and is the largest supplier of those products in Japan and throughout Asia.

Cognex will work with Mitsubishi to develop specially-configured versions of Cognex In-Sight® vision systems that will be designed to integrate seamlessly with Mitsubishi’s factory automation products.  In addition to collaborating on product development, the two companies will also jointly promote their integrated solutions at events such as tradeshows and seminars.  As a result of this collaboration, Mitsubishi’s factory automation customers will be able to purchase Cognex vision systems and quickly deploy them in their manufacturing operations.  Cognex expects that this partnership will significantly accelerate the sale of its vision systems, first in Japan and eventually in the fast-growing markets throughout Asia.

“Cognex machine vision systems are already being used together with Mitsubishi factory automation products to help guide robots, to direct motion control systems and to automate a wide range of manufacturing processes,” said Dr. Robert J. Shillman, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Cognex.  “This new partnership, which will result in dramatically improved connectivity between our respective products, is expected to increase the sale of both Cognex vision systems and Mitsubishi’s factory automation products against our common competitors.”

“Mitsubishi Electric is one of the world’s most highly respected factory automation companies, and is the largest provider of factory automation products in Japan and Asia.  We are proud to be selected as their vision partner,” said Eric Ceyrolle, Executive Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Marketing for Cognex.  “The power of Cognex vision will make it easier and faster than ever for Mitsubishi’s customers to improve the overall performance of their manufacturing processes.”

With over 80 years of experience in providing reliable, high-quality products to both corporate clients and general consumers all over the world, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation is a recognized world leader in the manufacture, marketing and sales of electrical and electronic equipment used in information processing and communications, space development and satellite communications, consumer electronics, industrial technology, energy, transportation and building equipment. The company recorded consolidated group sales of 4,049.8 billion yen (US $40.5 billion) in the fiscal year ended March 31, 2008.

Retaining ring measurement

Vision sensor improves ring measurement process

Rotor Clip is the world’s leading manufacturer of retaining rings, producing billions of rings annually at its 238,000 square foot production facility in Somerset, New Jersey.  From steering wheel assemblies to household appliances, Rotor Clip retaining rings help secure components onto shafts and inside bores.  Rings are produced in a wide range of sizes, from 1/25” (1mm) to 35” (889mm).

While the company has long relied on micrometers for measuring ring dimensions, operators were having trouble measuring rings that were less than half an inch in size. “When you have a ring that is about 1/8” in diameter, it’s very difficult for an operator to handle and place them in a micrometer,” explains Ed Engracia, a design engineer for Rotor Clip.  “Also, when the operator is using a vernier caliper, there’s a lot of room for error.  The operator could be pressing too hard in one instance, too lightly in another.”

Measurement speed, according to Engracia, was another problem.  Manually measuring six small-sized rings, he says, can take an operator up to 20 minutes.

To speed up the measurement process and improve accuracy, the company recently added an In-Sight® 1000 machine vision sensor from Cognex Corporation (Natick, MA) to its manufacturing line.  The In-Sight 1000 is a high-performance, general purpose vision sensor which incorporates a full library of vision software tools, built-in discrete I/O, a vision spreadsheet interface for application set up, and built-in Ethernet communications in a compact, self-contained unit.

According to Engracia, one of the primary reasons the In-Sight sensor was selected was due to its ability to store individual measurement programs or “jobs” that corresponded to each ring type via the vision spreadsheet interface.  “We had to make things as easy as possible for our operators since they had no previous experience with machine vision,“ he says.  “In-Sight was attractive because it had built in functions, which made it easy to customize a job for each part we wanted to measure with the vision system.  So all the operator needs to do is call up the job to start.”

To set up the programs, Engracia selected vision tools and parameters from the spreadsheet’s drop-down menus.  The vision spreadsheet then automatically generated tool results into worksheet cells, which were linked together to set up the measurement routine for each part.

Engracia designed the inspection station so the micrometer equipment and vision sensor are housed in the same hooded enclosure.  Operators retrieve retaining rings from collection bins, and after a few thickness measurements are taken by micrometers, a single ring is placed on a four-inch backlight component under the vision sensor.  Backlighting, according to Engracia, provides the optimal image contrast to get good dimensional data.

Once the operator brings up the measurement program that corresponds to the ring’s size, In-Sight captures an image of the ring from seven inches above and transfers it to its built-in vision processor.  There, a number of vision software tools are used to analyze the image.

“We measure a lot of different features,” says Engracia.  “On some rings, we only look at outside diameter and lug size, whereas for another ring type we might need to measure the inside diameter, min sections, max sections, and lug hole diameters.  Needless to say, it was important to have a range of vision tools to choose from so we could handle the different rings.”

More specifically, Engracia uses the In-Sight PatFind™ pattern location tool, which verifies the presence/absence of the part and applies a virtual fixture to “fixture” the part for the different measuring functions, the Find Circle Tool, which measures diameters, and the Find Segment Tool, which measures segment sizes.

As the measurements occur, operators can get a real-time view on a color LCD screen that is built into the inspection station enclosure.  “We were able to create a custom user interface with In-Sight that displays the various dimensions of the ring taken with the camera, and pass/fail lights in green and red which indicate if the part is good or bad,” explains Engracia.  “If any of the dimensions fall outside of tolerance, it’s usually an indication of the die being out of adjustment, in which case they have to stop the production equipment and make adjustments to the dies.”

One interesting feature of the new inspection station is that the micrometer equipment and vision sensor are linked via Ethernet, thus allowing thickness measurement data from the micrometers to be uploaded into the In-Sight program.  The combined micrometer and vision data is then sent over into a Quality Assurance database, giving QA engineers instant access to statistical data on each part in the event there is a customer complaint.  “If we need to backtrack on any problems that arise, it’s a lot easier for us to get the data we need from a database versus looking through paperwork,” Engracia explains.  “In-Sight puts everything into computer form, so the QA guys can just cut and paste the data into their statistical software.”

In-Sight’s built-in Ethernet communications also makes life easier for Engracia when he needs to monitor or control vision activity remotely.  “If someone’s having a problem on the floor, I can check it right from my desk and sometimes troubleshoot right from there.  I can also load new In-Sight programs remotely as they are needed.”

Since the In-Sight sensor was implemented since January 2003, it has improved Rotor Clip’s measurement accuracy, and the company has been able to reduce its overall measurement time by 75 %.  “Since our guys no longer have to handle such small parts, they can get the measurements done in far less time.  What used to take 20 minutes for six rings is now down to five,” says Engracia.

The company is currently in the process of adding another In-Sight sensor, the In-Sight 4001 — which provides high-resolution optics (1024 x 768 pixels) for capturing high-accuracy images of larger parts.  This sensor will be designated for inspecting retaining rings up to four inches in diameter.

Automated inspection system for quality control

COGNEX VISION SYSTEMS GUARANTEE THE QUALITY OF PLASTIC COMPONENTS FOR THE AUTOMOBILE INDUSTRY

Thanks to the In-Sight® 5100 vision sensor, OCSA can guarantee that the plastic components they produce for the automobile industry are totally free from faults.

OCSA S.p.A., a company specialising in moulding plastics, produces plastic parts for major organisations operating both in Italy and Europe-wide. One of the cornerstones of the strategy of this company, located in Creazzo (VI), has been the adoption of the most advanced, innovative technologies for automating production and quality control.

100% Control

OCSA received a major order to produce plastic components for the automobile industry. One of the requirements imposed was total exclusion of faults on the components produced. To meet this requirement, the company’s management decided to use a vision system, and their choice was the Cognex® In-Sight line vision systems. The reasons for this are explained by Marco Milan, the owner of OCSA: “First of all, we were aware of the fact that only a vision system would be able to meet our client’s requirement in full, and, in second place, we had already installed a vision solution based on Cognex In-Sight systems to carry out inspection tasks, and this had produced excellent results.”
In this case, the task of the vision system is to check with extreme accuracy the quality of each item produced, and to reject any found to be faulty. In greater detail, this system is able to intercept parts that show imperfections of any kind, such as geometrical defects, excess or lack of plastic material, presence of oil or other impurities on the plastic body.
The vision system was installed on equipment expressly dedicated to monitoring the operation described above. The total equipment consisted, in addition to the vision system, of a vibrating unit that sends through the parts to undergo inspection, a conveyor belt, which moves the parts under the remote camera, and a pneumatic discharge system, which removes faulty parts. The whole system, controlled by a PLC, has been designed and produced by TEC Srl of Lissone (MI), a systems integrator working with Cognex.
As to the vision sensor itself, Ocsa’s technical staff opted for the model In-Sight 5100: this device has been selected for its particular efficiency in terms of processing power, and its sturdy, reliable structure, which means that it can be used in particularly severe conditions.

The importance of the software

Another factor which made a decisive contribution to the decision to use the Cognex solution is the excellent software support: like all the other members of the In-Sight family, the 5100 model is supplied with the full Cognex vision tools library, making available advanced functionalities for the processing and analysis of images.
In the case of OCSA, a tool which is particularly useful has turned out to be PatFind®, a function enabling the In-Sight systems to locate the objects being inspected reliably and repeatably, even in the presence of changes of lighting, angle and scale. Each individual part is recognised and picked up by PatFind. Two geometric options provided by this tool – angle and reference position – make it possible to carry out a detailed in-depth analysis of the geometric characteristics of the object using the edge and blob finding tools.
The results obtained using this vision system have surpassed expectations; all faulty components have been eliminated, while the approved components rejection rate has fallen below 0.5%. Thanks to the high speed of inspection, at 120 parts/minute, there is no negative impact on line productivity.

Seat component vision inspection for assembly

An intelligent inspection solution for smarter seating

As a leading global component supplier to the automotive industry, the Keiper GmbH & Co Group develops and manufactures metal seat components and structures for automotive industry suppliers and manufacturers. Quality control using vision technology on the production line has brought flexible production lines, investment return in under a year and increased efficiency.

Make production more flexible and more reliable

The company’s range of products meets demand in the automotive sector for intelligent adjuster systems and innovative seat structures – both for front and rear. The team at their plant in Germany were looking for new ways to make the presence and variant inspection of components on the production line more flexible and reliable. In the past it used a complex mechanical control system, equipped with a number of touch controls which proved less then dependable.

Challenging : a production obstacle course

Before embarking on a vision solution, the different challenges that would present themselves had to be considered. Various elements in the production process could potentially prove problematic to a vision system:

- some 20 different types of component had to be identified with 100% reliability on each production line
- the individual components needed to be inspected for defects and correct positioning
- components were likely to vary in colour and aspect despite being identical in shape and dimension
- parts may have entirely different colours depending on the supplier
- oily films still present on the surface
- some parts are pitch-black while others have a metallic sheen

In-Sight brings high resolution and accurate object location

Keiper awarded the project to Octum, a Cognex Partner System Integrator (PSI) having considered their vision proposition based on the latest In-Sight® vision sensors. Cognex technology proved capable of providing a vision solution robust enough to handle the challenge. Thanks to the high resolution of the In-Sight 5403 vision sensor, high precision can be assured even for large components when measuring parts offering greater production flexibility. The In-Sight 5400 vision sensor family also benefits from a full range of software tools such as PatMax®. PatMax functions using the geometrical structures of objects (similar to CAD). The most important characteristics of an object such as edges, dimensions, shapes, angles, arcs and shades are isolated, identified and compared to the real-time image. Analysis of the data permits the operator to accurately define the objects position.

Flexible workflow

Reliable feature detection and incorporation of the In-Sight vision sensors in production offer other benefits. For example with the individual component variants there are minor differences as to whether the right or left-hand fitting side of the seat is concerned. Sometimes the right parts are inserted on the wrong side of a seat. Precise feature detection by the vision tools identifies such problems and notifies the operators. The error is corrected and production flow is not interrupted.

Fast - installation in 6 weeks

A complete turnkey system solution was implemented in only 6 weeks. The first control station was installed in June 2006 and has been operating reliably in three shifts including at the weekend since then. Given the satisfactory results, another control cell was established at the Kaiserslautern plant in February 2007. During this time the customer-specific user interface Octum designed for Keiper has proved to be ideal, making programming child’s play for machine operators and maintenance staff.

Real time return on investment

The targets set for the paying back of these production investments are less than a year at Keiper. Markus Röder, one of the people at Keiper responsible for opting for the vision system commented: “Employing a reliable international vision supplier like Cognex offers benefits which have a long-term impact on the entire group and its international production network.”

Robot guided valve inspection

Robot-guided inspection system ensures correct engine assembly at Ford

International Truck and Engine Corporation has recently implemented an innovative robot-guided inspection system at its manufacturing plant in Indianapolis, Indiana to verify the proper placement of valve bridges during assembly.

The diesel engines, which are produced for large Ford pickup trucks, feature 16- valve bridges, which sit on top of the engine’s valve stem.  During head assembly, the valve bridges are placed on top of the valve spring and a rocker arm is placed on top of the bridges.  This whole assembly is then placed onto the engine.  Prior to being installed on the engine, the valve bridges are only loosely held in place by the rocker arm.  It is necessary to inspect each one to ensure they are positioned accurately and that none of the components have become misaligned.

While the company has always achieved accurate, 100% inspection of its engine components, the inspections had been carried out manually.  An operator would look down into the engine assembly, check each individual valve bridge for placement, and mark each one with a paint pen to indicate that it had been inspected. The process was slow and costly from a labor standpoint.  The time had come to automate.

Having successfully implemented robots in other areas of production, International felt that a robot might be useful in this case, and called on CIM SYSTEMS INC., a Noblesville, Indiana-based systems integration firm that specializes in robotic automation.  According to Tony Hillers, a CIM SYSTEMS engineer assigned to the project, a robot-guided inspection station was the perfect solution.

“We all felt that robot-guided vision would be the most flexible solution in terms of being able to automatically inspect the parts inside the engine,” he explains.  “They could have set up a little finger probe that actually touched the part to do the verification, but the parts are difficult to approach consistently.  With vision, we’d be able to avoid any problems associated with a contact approach.”

One of initial ideas for a vision system, Hillers adds, was to have 16 separate vision cameras mounted above the inspection point, allowing for one camera per part.  The problem with this approach, however, was that the engine assembly is very full with components, and wires and other parts often occlude the valve bridges.  “We needed a way to allow a single-vision camera to move in and around the engine assembly in order to actually get a look at the parts even when other things are obscuring them.  Positioning the camera with a robot allowed us to implement logic that enabled the robot arm to try to see the valve bridge from multiple angles.”  Hillers also notes that a 16-camera vision system would have been an expensive option, and would require a great deal of maintenance.

The main components selected for the project included a single Cognex In-Sight 3000 vision sensor and a six-axis ABB IRB 140 robot.  The In-Sight 3000 is a high-performance machine vision sensor that consists of a industrial-hardened, DSP-based vision processing unit, high-speed digital camera that easily mounts to the robot arm, onboard light control, built-in discrete I/O, and a pre-installed vision library of greyscale vision software tools.  The In-Sight 3000 also provides a standard VGA output for real-time display, built-in Ethernet communications, and an onboard serial port which is used to link to the ABB robot controller.

To set up the 16-point inspection routine, Hillers used the In-Sight vision sensor’s spreadsheet interface.  With the look and feel of a traditional spreadsheet, the In-Sight vision spreadsheet enabled him to quickly select vision tools and parameters from drop-down menus, and configure a customized operator interface to make day-to-day operation of the system easy for line operators, technicians, and maintenance staff at International.  “It was easy to explain how it works to shop floor personnel,“ says Hillers, “and people with no programming experience were able to make changes to the program in one day.  If you can understand Microsoft Excel even a little bit, then you can pick up on it and go with it.”

Engine blocks come into the cell on a floor-mounted conveyor, each sitting in its own nested pallet.  Once an engine is present, the IRB 140 hovers over the engine block, positioning itself this way and that so that the vision camera can get a good view of the parts.  If the camera can’t see a part, the robot repositions itself at various angles until the part becomes visible.  To increase visibility, the parts are illuminated with a combination of a ring light, which is attached to the tooling on the end of the robot arm, and side-mounted fluorescent lighting.

Once a valve bridge is in view, the robot controller sends a signal to the vision camera to capture an image of the part.  The image is then sent to the In-Sight vision processing unit, which is mounted in the robot controller enclosure, and processed with In-Sight’s PatFind™ tool, a geometric pattern-matching software tool that verifies the proper position of the part despite any occlusions or variations in part appearance that may exist.

According to Scott Hauger, a CIM SYSTEMS applications engineer who worked on the project, pattern-matching performance factored heavily into the decision to go with the Cognex system.  “The valve bridges have a unique shape, and with so many components in the way it’s critical that the vision system is able to pick out the right features,” says Hauger.  “The PatFind tool does just that”

PatFind analyzes images using geometric information in place of pixel grid-based correlation.  For example, it interprets a square as four line segments and a football as two arcs.  By analyzing the geometric information from a part’s features and spatial relationships, the PatFind tool is able to precisely and repeatably determine the precise position of each valve bridge in the engine regardless of how it appears.

As each of the 16 valve bridges is inspected, operators can view a live image display of the parts on a nearby color monitor.  The display lists the different valve bridges by cylinder number, and provides pass/fail information for each inspection.  If all 16 parts pass inspection, the engine proceeds down the production line to a testing area.  If a failure is reported, the robot controller passes the information to a line control system to be written to an RF Identification tag.  At that point, the engine goes into a repair loop where an operator manually inspects the parts in question.  It is then re-routed through the cell and inspected by the In-Sight system again.

Since the robot-guided inspection system was installed, it has been running non-stop for two shifts per day without any problems.  According to Hillers, product quality has remained consistently high, and International is pleased to add this project to its long list of successful automation stories.

Assembly line upgrade for defect elimination

120,000 automotive parts manufactured by Meister are checked each day using Cognex machine vision

Cognex Corporation (NASDAQ: CGNX), the major global supplier of vision systems, sensors and bar code readers, presents an example of an application using industrial vision in precision mechanics. Intended for automobile equipment manufacturers, the parts manufactured by Meister France are subjected to very strict appearance checks with the aim of completely eliminating defective parts before delivery to customers. An ambitious gamble when you are producing almost 40 million parts per year. A gamble which has paid off thanks to Cognex In-Sight® industrial vision sensors.

The Meister Group is a Belgian industrial group mainly supplying the automobile market. The company has factories in Belgium, France and the Czech Republic specialising in the mass production of cut steel parts.
The challenges for these modern production units, which use specialist precision lathes, is to manufacture relatively complex parts in a few seconds, and to guarantee the conformity of the parts on delivery, without ignoring the essential and continual search for gains in productivity.

In France, the Meister factory is located at Scionzier, in Haute-Savoie. It manufactures electric valve parts for automobile equipment manufacturers specialising in ABS braking systems. Nearly twenty-four multi-spindle lathes produce 120,000 parts each day, representing an annual production of 35 to 40 million parts.

The demand for quality is the main problem on which all of its efforts are concentrated: it has to try and avoid delivery of defective parts to customers. In a sector where the smallest incident on an assembly line can bring about exhaustive investigations and can lead to complicated and costly procedures for the subcontractor, the search for Zero Faults is the only acceptable way forward.
However, the manufacturing techniques used and the demands of mass production do not allow such an objective to be reached directly from the use of machines. Checking and sorting has to be carried out in order to remove defective parts, with the faults consisting of missing components, metal shavings, loose components, damage from vibration or knocks…

Checks were previously carried out by the naked eye by operators which limited the number of defective parts to around 1 in a 1000. This was still too many, and so studies had to be carried out in order to reduce this rate as a value lower than 100 ppm was aimed for. It was also necessary to work on reducing the impact of manpower costs on the cost price of the parts.
Considering the automation of these checks by vision tools was a natural approach for Meister’s technicians, who already had experience of industrial vision systems for a dimension checking application. A seminar organised by the Alpsitec company also allowed them to find out about the performance and capacities of the In-Sight vision sensors, made by Cognex, the world leader in industrial vision.

Alpsitec is an approved partner system integrator of Cognex. The company was called upon to carry out a demonstration directly on the production line so as to verify that the Cognex cameras were capable of “seeing” the faults they had to detect. After this first feasibility test, a prototype was brought up to date and assessed over a month. The simplicity of the use of the In-Sight sensors was a decisive factor in the choice of the system. The Terms and Conditions were drawn up and two test systems were ordered.

The checking system – in fact two independent test benches – was installed at the end of the production line in order to carry out a final check of the parts just before they were packed. All the parts produced were sent to this control point, therefore 100% of the production is checked.

The parts are put into their packaging – the mesh – by a robot. Once the packaging is completed, the robot picks it up and places it on the test surface. Then the robot takes hold of the Cognex In-Sight 1000 vision sensor linked to a lighting system and passes it along the mesh, over the parts. It’s important to remember that the vision sensor must inspect each part in order to detect any of the four types of faults to be removed: presence of metal shavings, missing components, loose components, and damage from knocks or vibration. The sensor sends information on the checks carried out to the robot’s control centre. The robot puts the vision sensor down and takes the defective parts and deposits them into a chute – one chute for each type of fault – which then carries them to a hopper. Then the system continues its operation.

One of the test benches is fitted with two In-Sight 1000 vision sensors and operates at a rate of 6000 parts per hour. The other system comprises a single sensor and works at a rate of 4000 parts per hour. Both systems worked as dual sorters during the first few months of the operation.

The important part of the work of updating the application consisted of identifying the various faults which the checking systems had to recognise and to “teach” them to the vision sensors. This procedure is essential for optimising the efficiency of the checking system.

The rate of faulty parts delivered to customers has rapidly dropped to 40 per million. The power of the processor algorithms of the In-Sight sensor and the finer analysis of the faults to be removed should allow this rate to be brought down even more to below 20ppm.

Jean-Marc Sermet, Technical Director of Meister France, has supervised this project from beginning to end. He is very pleased with Cognex products and Alpsitec’s service, the combination has provided him with the necessary skills and experience in setting up vision solutions in industry. “Above all, we are engineers specialising in precision metal cutting”, stated Mr.  Sermet. “Alpsitec’s contribution has allowed us to make rapid progress on this project and to benefit from efficient and reassuring support.”

Alpsitec has also trained a technician who has been able to rapidly take charge of setting the vision sensors’ parameters. So Meister is able to input data by itself for new types of faults to be learned and for modifying the parameters in relation to the 15 different types of parts to be inspected.

“We were concerned that these test systems would slow down production rates. We have noted with satisfaction that the implementation of these industrial vision solutions do not have a negative effect on production”, added Jean-Marc Sermet. “The solution used appears to be particularly stable, and the operators do not have any need to intervene.”
The biggest reward is that there has been a real return on investment in less than six months. Customer relations have been strengthened from the significant improvement in quality. Meister is currently looking at other applications for industrial vision on its production lines.