Good news: In-Sight vision system successfully solved Changan Ford’s inspection problems

 Changan Ford Automobile Co., Ltd. is a large modern automobile enterprise with cross-regional and multi-brand production and operation capabilities. In recent years, Changan Ford has continuously introduced excellent production technology, which has greatly improved fuel economy performance, whether in terms of engine and fuel-saving technology or the use of materials. In the future, the company's development focus will be on "energy saving and emission reduction" and "creating more energy-saving cars and more environmentally friendly manufacturing processes."
Transmission assembly is an important process in automobile manufacturing. It can be roughly divided into three steps: the first step is to put the parts into the designated material box; the second step is to assemble the parts of the material box into small components; the third step is to assemble the small components into a complete transmission. These three steps involve many production lines, and each production line needs to detect the presence or absence of parts after placing them, or detect whether the parts are placed in place.

                                                                                             图1 料盒内放入零件后需要相机来检测有无和放置的位置是否到位

placing parts in the box, a camera is needed to detect whether they are present and whether the placement is in place.
"The biggest challenge in this application is that if manual inspection is used, firstly, it requires an adaptation process to the new varieties, and in this process "There are certain problems in the speed and quality of inspection; secondly, it will increase labor costs." Changan Ford's equipment engineer said, "For the production line, in the face of product updates, mechanical tooling inspection and transformation is very troublesome, and it is also difficult to reserve spare parts. The problem is that once a fault occurs, there is no timely response, so production can only be stopped for repairs, which delays production. In addition, there are some very small differences that neither the human eye nor the tooling can detect." Faced with these thorny problems,
Changan Ford's equipment engineers needed to find a workable solution.
"Ford's foreign factories have adopted Cognex's technology and products for a long time and have great trust in the brand. Therefore, Ford automobile-related production lines in mainland China are also required to use Cognex's products." Equipment engineer at Changan Ford pointed out, “Since we already have a certain understanding of Cognex, we decided to choose Cognex’s image-based In-Sight vision system .”
According to the inspection requirements, the basic working process of the In-Sight vision system is: the material box is in When the conveyor belt encounters a stopper, it stops; the worker or machine puts the parts into the box and clicks the button; the PLC sends a signal to the camera, triggering the camera to take a picture; after the camera takes the picture, it runs the program and returns the result to the PLC, and the PLC executes it again One-step instructions; HMI equipment will be installed at each workstation, and the results and pictures of the camera inspection will be displayed on the HMI for easy confirmation and viewing.
The excellent PatMax image matching technology, as the main inspection tool of the In-Sight vision system, left a deep impression on Changan Ford's equipment engineers. "PatMax allows us to set up simply. Even if we add new products, we only need to create a new image model to easily complete the work. In addition, a single camera can set multiple inspection programs and multiple exposure times, and can also be set up through a PLC. Call a different inspection program."
The industry's gold standard for part and feature location, PatMax provides accurate and repeatable inspection in tough conditions. This technology uses a series of boundary curves that do not rely on a pixel grid to obtain the geometric shape of the object, and then looks for similar shapes in the image. This technology is not limited to a specific gray level. In this way, the object can be accurately found regardless of changes in its angle, size and shape, which fundamentally improves the working ability of this method.
The In-Sight vision system based on image matching PatMax has many powerful functions:
First, the camera supports many communication protocols and can communicate with the corresponding network very conveniently and quickly.
Secondly, the camera program mainly uses a powerful spreadsheet, which can achieve multiple photos and multiple inspections when inspecting complex parts. "During the inspection of some parts, we found that the grease on the surface of the parts had a great impact on the inspection. By adding a method of triggering multiple exposures once, we solved this problem." Changan Ford's equipment engineer commented on this, "The camera Multiple programs can be stored, and if there are many types of programs, the corresponding type of program can also be called through the PLC, which is very convenient and powerful."

                                                                                                            图2 PatMax既有定位作用，又有检测的功能。

2 PatMax has both positioning and detection functions.
Finally, the camera can not only return the results to the PLC, but also send the corresponding data values to the PLC. The image storage function facilitates subsequent image tracking.
According to reports, this project uses the In-Sight 5000 series vision system, which can not only meet many needs such as code reading and inspection, but also greatly facilitates spare parts work. This series of smart cameras are made of solid cast aluminum and come with a sealed M12 connector box lens protection. They are all protected by IP67 packaging to ensure extremely reliable detection performance in any production environment.
The outstanding performance of the In-Sight vision system successfully solved Changan Ford's inspection problems. "Today, the demand for automobiles is increasing, and automobile output and quality are both crucial. After adopting the In-Sight vision system, we have solved these two major problems at the same time. Now, the factory has greatly improved its performance while ensuring quality first. It increases output and reduces production costs." Changan Ford's equipment engineer concluded, "Whether it is the difficulty of inspection or the speed of inspection, Cognex cameras have withstood the test under our strict project acceptance."