Benchmark for Cylindrical Parts Inspection and Measurement

Boulder Imaging is offering an innovative, powerful solution for cylindrical parts inspection and measurement. Boulder Imaging’s Benchmark non-contact coordinate measuring machine (CMM) provides immediate, accurate, high-precision, complete, micron-level parts inspection and measurement in-line or off-line.

Benchmark does in seconds what previously involved numerous laser and probe measurement devices, manual inspection tools (all in multiple locations), and required over 40 minutes to complete. Benchmark captures complete part detail in the blink of an eye. Place the part into the inspection station, then click a button to inspect and measure the part features down to the nearest micron. Benchmark is powerful; features >.5mm in length are measured to approximately +/- 4µm. At >1mm, measurements of approximately +/- 2µm are achieved. Benchmark for cylindrical parts measurement currently measures parts up to 2.5” in diameter and 2” – 7.5” in length.

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Beacon Intelligent Machine Vision for Web Materials Inspection

The Vision Inspector Beacon module is ideally suited to find surface defects, non-uniformities, and registration errors in paper, film, and fiber web materials. It has the unique ability to find both reflective and transmissive defects, common in paper, film, and fiber inspection. Beacon is an intelligent machine vision system, not only does it detect even the most minute defects, it classifies and characterizes defects.

Intelligent Machine Vision for Surface Detect Detection

Web-based materials manufacturers need 100% quality inspection. A tiny defect in the web materials becomes greatly magnified during processing and use. In addition, false-positives and down-time need to be eliminated from the web manufacturing process. Beacon does all of this and more.

Beacon detects a variety of defects on web materials. Beacon detects reflective and transmissive defects and identifies a number of defect types (e.g. process buildup, subtle white spots, handling defects, blade cuts, calendar marks, fish eyes, pin holes, craters, seeds, sags, holes, burn marks, friction lines, wrinkles, and many others). In addition, Beacon can detect minute errors in:

• Registration/alignment
• Regularity
• Uniformity
• Color consistency
• Surface defects and non-uniformities (cracks, texture, dirt, hairs, holes, wrinkles, streaks, craters, seeds, stains, roll marks, punctures, bubbles, etc.)

In order to detect the full range of defects, Beacon captures very fine resolution images (~14µm resolution). Typical web materials defects run between 10µm and 100µm. With Beacon, even higher resolutions can be attained (<5µm).

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Beacon Defect Detection Substantially Increases Production Line Speed and Inspection Accuracy of Web Materials

Crane Currency employs multiple Vision Inspector systems from Boulder Imaging. These systems provide print registration inspection for Mylar thread running at line speeds of 750 feet per minute, down to a 10µm resolution. The inspection systems run flawlessly on their production lines 16 hours per day.

Boulder Imaging systems include data reporting features that provide keen insight into defect types, patterns, characteristics, and frequencies. This proves of substantial value to Crane, who previously experienced false positives averaging six per hour that required they repeatedly shut down their production line. False positives are down to one per 48-64 hours and are continually decreasing as Beacon’s intelligent defect characterization enables Crane to identify and correct negative trends associated with recurring types of defects.

Boulder Imaging’s Vision Inspector Beacon provides Crane:

• Inspection speed increase of > 300%.
• Virtual elimination of false positives (from an average of 6 per hour to 1 per 48-64 hours and improving).
• Production line integration.
• 100% micron-level inspection accuracy at speeds of 750 feet per minute.

Solutions from Boulder Imaging have made an extraordinary contribution to Crane Currency’s security paper production line efficiency and their overall quality control process.

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Benchmark Provides Critical Design and Optimization Information to Wind Turbine Engineers

Boulder Imaging’s Benchmark provides real-time motion analysis of wind turbine blades, which allows design engineers to understand how blade oscillations affect the performance of the wind turbine. Benchmark provides wind design engineers with precise measurements on flex and twist of the blade to an accuracy of 1mm and 1/10° of twist.

Benchmark precisely measures the kinematics of the wind turbine blade and how it correlates to wind speed, direction, energy production, and efficiency. The valuable feedback provided to design engineers allows them, in turn, to develop optimally designed wind turbine blades. Design engineers can view unexpected results immediately and make adjustments before wind turbine designs are approved. 

Boulder Imaging’s Vision Inspector Benchmark provides GE Energy:

• Inspection of substantial objects (measuring over 30 meters/150’ in length) that reside outside and are exposed to weather and to highly variable lighting (varying with blade rotation, time of day, and season). 
• Precise measurements of flex and twist of turbine blades to an accuracy of 1mm and 1/10° of twist. 
• Real-time feedback on how wind turbine blades correlate to wind speed, direction, energy production, and efficiency - allowing GE wind engineers to make immediate design adjustments.

Overcoming the many inspection challenges in motion analysis of wind turbine blades provides an example of the strength of Boulder Imaging’s expertise in the utilization of visual technology. Inspection of objects that are substantial in size, while in motion, and in variable weather and lighting conditions requires creative problem-solving. This is the foundation on which Boulder Imaging systems are based.

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Beacon Provides In-Line Inspection and Significantly Reduces Costs for Lexmark

Lexmark deploys Vision Inspector Beacon in-line at Lexmark to inspect 100% of their printer drums. Beacon inspects printer drums at rates of 80 parts/min and guides robotic tools to sort the drums into “pass” or “fail” groups.

In addition, to pass/fail determination, an operator workstation for each line allows an engineer to view defects and to perform rule-based classification on the likely causes for these defects directly on the production line. Defects can be extremely small (bubbles, scratches, etc., < 50µm) and as such, they require powerful image processing to classify. 

Boulder Imaging successfully addressed environmental and materials challenges in the solution design and implementation. Factors such as surface reflection, lighting, camera selection, etc., were all carefully integrated to create the successful implementation for Lexmark.

Boulder Imaging’s Vision Inspector Beacon provides Lexmark:

• 40% reduction of capital costs.
• 100% reliability for 8 years running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
• System trained to eliminate historical problems with false positives.
• Full integration into the production line. Controls robotics to identify and remove defective parts from the line.

The Vision Inspector Beacon module outperforms Lexmark’s requirements for reliability, uptime, robustness, highly tunable, extremely high defect sensitivity, extremely low false positives, and accurate and flexible defect classification.

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Premier Reduces Measurement Task Time and Improves Quality for Precision Parts Manufacturing

With the ultra-fast, precise, and highly efficient Premier module, Del West performs 100% parts inspection and precise measurement on their high performance combustion valves. 

• Inspection and measuring requirements previously required five metrology machines and forty minutes. With Premier, these tasks are accomplished in fewer than 10 seconds with one system.
• Features as small as 100µm in length can be accurately measured. Measurement accuracies are approximately +/-20µm for features < 1mm in length and +/-2µm for features < 4 inches.
• Surface defects as minute as < 10µm are identified with 100% accuracy.
• Premier has enabled a dramatic increase in efficiency and productivity and has completely revolutionized production and profitability for Del West.

More efficiency, better product performance, minimized waste through detection of defects in production, and an ability to grow and change with minimal cost and effort all lead to better products and stronger profit margins. Revolutionizing manufacturing with Boulder Imaging’s intelligent machine vision solutions.

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Benchmark Contributes to Technological Superiority by Providing Best in Class Imaging and Data

Cloud physics specialist SPEC uses Benchmark to image, detect, measure, characterize, and classify tiny ice crystals and particles. Benchmark accomplishes this in less than 2 milliseconds. Imagery is taken in real time at ultra-high speeds of 500 frames per second.

In order to image such minute particles, Benchmark’s triggering needs to be extremely precise. In addition, the system is designed to withstand the extremes of aircraft flight—vibrations, rapid pressure changes, temperatures to -70°C.

Boulder Imaging’s experience and expertise in high-speed, high-performance, real-time image capture, processing, and analysis provides high-quality, scientific grade data for SPEC’s cloud physics research systems.

Vision Inspector Benchmark significantly contributes to SPEC’s technological superiority in the field and provides extraordinary value to NASA and other governmental agencies doing atmospheric research.

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Quazar Provides Long-Duration, High-Resolution Imagery from Multiple Perspectives

Boeing creatively uses Boulder Imaging’s recording and playback solution as a platform to build a next generation simulation system that delivers realistic scenarios for training. The Vision Inspector Quazar C-130 flight simulators are designed to simultaneously record multiple high-definition video streams from training sessions on a single recording device with playback on demand. The solution is directly integrated into their existing flight simulator systems thus making it transparent and extremely user friendly to operate.

Using Vision Inspector Quazar, Boeing has been able to provide various teams (engineers, project and program managers, military professionals, and decision makers) with completely time correlated, uncompressed video data for scientifically accurate analysis.

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