Identification and localization of plasma cut steel products – a collaboration with Voortman Steel Machinery

Identification and localization of plasma cut steel products – a collaboration with Voortman Steel Machinery

Machine vision systems are becoming more important for efficient quality inspection of (industrial) products. With the increasing demand of high throughput and flexible production in production lines, the quality inspection by hand is too expensive, not accurate and fast enough. Automated inspection systems are able to increase the efficiency and production yield. Voortman Steel Machinery B.V. is a company specialized in the design, development, and manufacturing of high quality machinery for fabrication and processing of steel. Plasma cut steel products have to be automatically localized on a steel conveyor belt, identified using a machine vision system, and eventually picked up by a robotic arm. Together with three student groups the research group of mechatronics investigated various illumination possibilities. Based on the results a machine vision system has been designed and realized that is able to localize and identify the steel products on a steel conveyor belt. During this work the possibilities of diffuse illumination, and illumination in the bright and dark field regime, with and without polarization has been investigated. The optimal position of the illumination has been determined to create the largest contrast between the product and the conveyor belt.