A custom integrator of turnkey automated inspection machines for quality control, Cincinnati Automation (Erlanger, KY) “saw the light,” adopting a new LED backlit conveyor to convert automotive part gaging from a step-by-step to continuous process, more than tripling throughput.
Bespak Ltd. (Buckinghamshire, United Kingdom) is a manufacturer of specialty medical devices for inhaled drug delivery and anaesthesia. The company manufactures more than 450 million complex devices each year, many of which are inhalers used to administer medicine to those with illnesses such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Tensile and compressive helical springs form a key element of the operating mechanism of these devices.
Centrax (Devon, England), a producer of gas turbines and turbine components, has reduced the time required to inspect turbine blades 97% by switching from a coordinate measuring machine (CMM) to the Maxos optical scanning system from Southlake, TX-based NVision Inc.
ISO 13485: 2003 represents the requirements that medical device manufacturers must incorporate into their management systems. The current document supersedes its 1996 incarnation as well as EN 46001, EN 46002 and ISO 13488.
Product defects are a given in manufacturing. Unfortunately, no manufacturing process is so refined that it produces perfect parts on every run. For quality professionals, the goal is to identify which processes are working properly and those that are creating quality issues. Whether it is a package of candy, a toy, an appliance or an automobile, manufacturers need to know exactly what customers are receiving when they put their faith in the brand and make a purchase.
Work-around techniques are still commonplace throughout all manufacturing industries, even though most companies actively embrace and implement quality control procedures. Rather than rejecting incorrectly fitting parts and subassemblies and re-engineering the process to make them right, manufacturers continue to use loose go-with-work/no-go tests and work-around procedures to cover out-of-control processes.
The coordinate measuring machine (CMM) business continues to churn out emerging technologies at an eager pace. Likewise, the 2-D vision measurement industry also is moving with the times. As modern day manufacturing increasingly relies on 3-D computer-aided design (CAD) data to produce accurate parts, the vision world has made the leap into this new dimension.
Measuring systems for manufacturing quality control can offer combinations of sensor technologies so those systems can do more thorough measurements of even the most complex parts. Selecting the sensor to use for a particular measurement must be based on its capabilities and the characteristics of actual parts to be measured.
Machine vision has evolved to become a fast and reliable tool for quality inspection. In many cases, a machine vision optical inspection system can perform quality inspections more quickly and accurately than humans and at a lower cost. However, can a machine “see” in color? And does introducing color into the equation help with quality inspection?
It’s customary to look back and assess the past year. Not wanting to buck this tradition, I pulled out my folder of manufacturing and quality-related highlights, and lowlights, from 2007. As I write this there is still one month to go in the year, so I ask for your indulgence should something major occur from mid-November through December.
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