Towards Automated Visual Inspection and Classification of Micro-Parts
The mechanical manufacturing of micro-parts is a challenging field of research. Because of high quality requirements and small tolerances, manufacturing processes have to be very stable and precise. In order to achieve high precision a suitable quality assurance concept is required. Only measured features can be used for statistical process control (SPC). Therefore, this paper presents a concept of an automated visual inspection and classification methods for micro-parts. Using confocal laser scanning microscopy, high-resolution 3D-height maps with depth selectivity are obtained. The identification of surface imperfections is done with a set of conventional image processing techniques. Afterwards, these kinds of surface defects are classified by the use of classification methods like decision trees.
Image acquisition and automated inspection of wine bottlenecks by tracking in multiple views
In this paper we propose a prototype for image sequence acquisition of glass wine bottlenecks, whose main novelty is the use of an inner lighting source for better capturing of potential defects. A novel approach for automatic inspection of the bottlenecks based on tracking potential flaws along the acquired sequence is also presented. Our inspection system achieves performance rates of 87% true positives and 0% false positives.
Superplastic micro-forming of microstructures
Superplastic micro-forming processes have been applied to forming and fabrication of micromechanical components. Selected materials are a fine grained superplastic Al-78Zn alloy, pure iron as a transformation superplastic material, and amorphous LaAlNi, ZrAlCu alloys which exhibit a supercooled liquid state. With these materials, microformability tests have been carried out with the specially developed evaluation system by using V-grooved micro dies made of [100] silicon. The throat width of the V-groove is from 1 to 20 /spl mu/m. With these dies, micro-forging has been carried out and the characteristics of micro-formability of the material have been clarified. In a fine grained superplastic of polycrystalline aggregates, the accuracy limit of micro-formability is depend on the grain diameter. On the other hand, quite superior formability has been observed in the amorphous alloys after forming under a supercooled liquid condition. These results indicate an importance of a deformation mechanism from a view point of polycrystalline structure or a micro(/spl mu/m) scopic scale. A good micro-formability shown above has been applied to a dosed die forging of microstructures such as micro pyramids and microdouble gear system. As a result, superplastic materials and amorphous alloys are useful for micro-forming and fabrication of microstructures or components for MEMS.