Automatic Inspection of Thickness-Fast

To check thickness of a round part, a slot in a piece of steel forms an OK gauge. A second one at minimum thickness will then identify those that are too thin.

At 2000 per hour, I'd set up a channel with slots in the bottom. First slot at bottom tollerance, second slot is at top tolerance.

As the washers roll down the channel, the undersize ones will drop through the first slot, the OK ones will drop through the second slot and the oversize ones will proceed beyond the slots and drop off the end.

If you have grinding facilities, this is very easy to fabricate and maintain.

You can do the sums for the dimensions very easily. You might like some draft in the bottom of the slots to help parts fall away easily. Keep the top edges "square" to avoid marginal washers jamming into the slots.

Note this does NOT check ID, OD or concentricity, just the thickness.

Hope this helps.

If each of the three attributes you call out must be within ±.001, and you are grinding the parts, what's the problem?

Are you really grinding the OD, ID and thickness?

You should be able to punch these parts.

Keyence (keyence.com) has some laser devices that could easily measure the thickness with that precision and at that rate, and control a reject solenoid. I'm assuming that the thickness is the only critical dimension. They also have vision systems that can measure ID, OD and concentricity at that rate, although I'm not sure about the precision there.

Not only keyence, there are a lot of guys in the market for that.

but that angle with slots suggested by "just an engineer" seems more easy to do.

I can't argue with the simplicity of the slot idea; I like it too. I do think some form of vibratory action would be required to achieve ±0.001" (0.002" total) precision, if that precision is even achievable with slots. It would probably also require some form of automatic device to eject stuck washers. At that precision, there are going to be some that have a slight taper and happen to enter in their narrow side. If the eject mechanism did not push straight up, it could actually jam them worse.

It is also not trivial to get the washers to stand up on edge in single file; I think it would be best to get them in single file while laying nearly flat, then twist the guides as they continue downhill. A standard vibratory feeder could handle that, and probably provide the vibratory motion to guide the parts through the slots as well.

The more I think about this, the more I'm convinced that jamming will be a problem at 2000 parts per hour. Finally, if the grinding machines are amenable, the electronic sensing could not only accept/reject, it could also be used to adjust the grinders as the wheels wear.

I intended to mention that there are other companies, but forgot... I said Keyence, because they are the ones I actually have experience with, and I know they can do the job.

depend on your manufacturing processes, if it is controlled processes then you can use the statistical control to monitor the tolerance of the part or if you prefer to checked 100% then camera with measuring software can do the job

Hello,

I can supply the custom built automatic inspection system for the same.

Regards

Madhav Chowdhary