Can dimensional gauging be automated?

Presenting parts to a fixed gauge is usually better than hanging a gauge on a robot, because the metrology stays in a controlled fixture and the robot only has to be repeatable.

Free, about two minutes, no phone number. You get an honest no when a robot is the wrong answer.

What the job actually is

Somebody measures features on a sample or on every part, with calipers, a gauge or a CMM, and records the result. It is slow, and on a multi cavity or multi spindle process the sampling can miss a drifting cavity for hours.

Signs it is worth automating

• You sample by hand and a drifting cavity or spindle could hide between samples.
• Measurement is slow enough to bottleneck the process.
• You need measurement data recorded for customers.
• Multi cavity or multi spindle work where per source tracking would help.

What the cell looks like

A 3 to 10 kg class arm presenting parts to fixed instruments: laser micrometer, vision system, scale or gauge. Results feed a statistical process control system so measurement becomes process feedback rather than a pass or fail gate.

This is one job inside a bigger family. The inspection guide covers the equipment classes, the cost ranges, and the disqualifiers for all of it.

When the answer is no

• Your tolerances need a CMM in a temperature controlled room, which is a different project.
• Volumes are low enough that hand gauging keeps up comfortably.
• You have no plan for what to do with the data once you have it.
• Nobody has established gauge repeatability and reproducibility on the current method.

What an engineer has to verify

• Gauge repeatability and reproducibility on your current manual method, as the baseline.
• Which features actually need measuring versus which are measured out of habit.
• Whether results must feed a statistical process control system and how.
• Part presentation repeatability into the gauge fixture.
• Temperature sensitivity of the measurement and of your plant.

Safety is not on that list because it is not ours to determine. Cell design, guarding and the risk assessment belong to an independent certified integrator, every time.

What the research says

Peer reviewed work from our research library on this application. These are studies of other plants and other settings, not a prediction about yours, and the excerpts are the authors' own words. Every title links to the source so you can check us.

• Automated visual inspection in the semiconductor industry: A survey Szu-Hao Huang and Ying-Cheng Pan (2014), Computers in Industry
• Artificial Intelligence-Based Smart Quality Inspection for Manufacturing Sarvesh Sundaram and Abe Zeid (2023), Micromachines

  From the abstract: “In today's era, monitoring the health of the manufacturing environment has become essential in order to prevent unforeseen repairs, shutdowns, and to be able to detect defective products that could incur big losses.”

• How and why we need to capture tacit knowledge in manufacturing: Case studies of visual inspection Teegan Johnson et al. (2018), Applied Ergonomics
• Human Factors in Visual Quality Control Agnieszka Kujawińska and Katarzyna Vogt (2015), Management and Production Engineering Review

  From the abstract: “Visual control (visual inspection) is often used in production because - in comparison to other kinds of control - it is relatively easy to conduct.”

• Moving towards in-line metrology: evaluation of a Laser Radar system for in-line dimensional inspection for automotive assembly systems Ercihan Kiraci et al. (2016), The International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology

  From the abstract: “The increasing interest towards intelligent systems has led to a demand for the development of zero-defect strategies, with a paradigm shift from off-line and dedicated to in-line metrology with integrated robotic systems.”

The full machine vision and inspection on the floor shelf has 14 works.

Someone has already done this

See it run

Two clips of this job actually running, from two different manufacturers. Both are the makers' own marketing footage, showing a cell under good conditions with a part it was set up for, so watch them for what the motion looks like rather than as evidence of what your rate would be.