Video Inspection Machine for Explsoive Material
The automated video inspection machine was designed to inspect the critical areas of a range of assembled mortars.
To start the inspection process, the shift supervisor enters a unique password to access the machines operating software and selects the mortar to be inspected by the machine. With the selection made, the supervisor places a “Gold Standard” Mortar in the cradle at the input area of the machine and depresses (2) anti-tie-down palm buttons. This signal initiates the machine cycle. A guillotine door automatically rises allowing the machines walking beam to raise the mortar from the cradle and into the machine.
With the mortar safely in the machine, the door closes. The walking beam moves the mortar sequentially through the inspection stations in the machine and out the other end. The supervisor examines the results proving that the system is ready to be released to manufacturing.
The operator repeats the process as described placing a mortar onto the input cradle and depresses the two palm buttons to initiate the inspection process.
At the first station, two laser sensors measure the distance to the mortar and confirm the maximum length of the mortar. At the subsequent stations, the mortar is presented to several line and area scan video cameras to check the location and position of the predefined critical items. Area scan cameras look for damaged parts or parts not seated correctly. If the mortar is considered a reject, it is automatically removed from the walking beam and placed into the reject area for further manual inspection.
Having deposited the rejected mortar in the reject area, a guillotine door automatically rises allowing the operator to remove the rejected mortar. If there are multiple sequentially rejected mortars, the system will shut down to allow for further manual investigation into the problem.
All accepted mortars are automatically placed onto an output tray after the output guillotine door rises allowing the walking beam to place the mortar onto the tray.
The HMI touch screen terminal displays the results of each inspection. The machines computer memory records each inspection and has a one (1) Terabyte hard drive to store several weeks of production data.
