Abstract
Development of vision system as a nondestructive evaluation system can be very useful in screening the defective mechanical parts before they are assembled into the final product. Since the tens of thousands of the mechanical parts are used in an automobile carefully inspecting the quality of the mechanical parts is very important to maximize the performance of the automobile. To sort out the defective mechanical parts before they are assembled, auto parts fabrication companies employ various inspection systems. Nondestructive evaluation systems are getting rapidly popular among various inspection systems. In this study, we have developed a vision system to inspect the inside of the brake caliper, a part that is used to compose a brake which is the most important to the safety of the drivers and the passengers. In a brake caliper, a piston is pushed against the brake disk by oil pressure, causing a friction to damp the rotation of the wheel. Inside the caliper, a groove is positioned to adopt an oil seal to prevent the oil leaks. Inspecting the groove with our vision system, we could examine the existence of the contaminants which are normally the residual tiny pieces from the machining process. We used a high resolution GigE camera, 360 degree lens to look in the inside view of the caliper at once, and a special illumination system in this vision system. We used the edge detection technique to successfully detect the contaminants which were in the form of small metal chips. Labview graphical program was used to process the digital data from the camera and to display the vision and the statistics of the contaminants. We were very successful in detecting the contaminants from the various size calipers. We think we are ready to employ this vision system to the caliper production factories.
