Caveats:
(In other words: these are sorting systems not magical crystal balls) When it comes to sorting parameters, one person’s “deformed” part is another person’s “bad” part. Terms such as damaged, spiral, drunken, smashed, gross, filled, rolled, bad, misformed, malformed, deformed, loose, dirty, stained, nicked, broken, bent, cracked, split, sheared, burr, bellied, bulged are all terms we have actually encountered.

Indeed, our inspections do find and reject for various degrees of these parameters. However, since these defects are not precisely defined, there will always be some degree of these conditions that will fall below the detection resolution of our machine.

Additionally, the detection of certain attributes is dependent on their visibility to the vision systems. Dirty parts, inconsistent plating, oils etc. will all diminish the systems ability to make the defects visible. In particular, any sort of plating or patch residue in the threads can significantly reduce the ability to analyze them.

The size and orientation of the defect is also critical. Obviously, any defect condition can reach a size that will fall below the detection level of the camera systems. Also, defect detection is limited by the view of the camera. For example, threads are not analyzed over 100% of their surface area. Defects that do not have a circumferential exposure of more than 25° have a possibility of being in the blind spot of a camera.

Camera Resolution:
Camera resolution is dependent on the field of view (FOV) of the camera system. However when looking at small parts with a FOV <1”, the camera can resolve to less than 0.001”. The ability to repeatedly measure actual parts to this level is greatly affected by the overall variability of the part. When trying to hold tolerances to less than 0.002”, it is most common to see the system “noise”, i.e. part variation and discontinuity, render it impractical to effectively sort out such small defects without failing an inordinate amount of good parts.

Using high-speed inspection and sorting systems, Forest City qualifies threaded fasteners, o-rings, gaskets and seals.