Dial-X Automated Equipment
designs and builds automated inspection, assembly and material-handling
equipment for a wide range of customers, including those in the pharmaceutical,
automotive and consumer goods industries. It often integrates machine vision in
its systems to do everything from detect part deformities to verify part
presence in a finished assembly.
Recently the company built an automated connector assembly machine that
included 11 PresencePLUS cameras, two spotlights, a backlight and an on-axis
light from machine vision and machine safety specialist Banner Engineering
Corp.
Dial-X went with multiple lighting types to accommodate the different kinds of
parts being inspected.
“If we’re verifying the connector’s shape, we’ll use a backlight to create a
silhouette of the product,” says Dial-X project manager Ryan Berkes said. “For
verifying color, we’ll use a spotlight to highlight the front part of the
connector. The on-axis light is used to mute the color of one of four internal
connector parts. This allows us to measure and verify that two parts are
assembled correctly.”
The machine also includes a number of EZ LIGHT indicator lights, also from
Banner. These lights are most often used for highly visible machine status
indication. However, in the case of the connector assembly machine, their small
size and robust construction made them ideal for lighting some of the
connectors’ smallest components.
According to Dial-X President Curt Bonar, his company frequently employs
PresencePLUS Pro and P4 cameras in the machines it builds because of their
flexibility, their small size, and the ease with which they can be integrated
into a larger, more complicated system.
“We chose Banner originally because their equipment was low in cost and worked
well for inspecting our customers’ products...Banner’s vision sensors offer
ease of use and relatively small size, with lots of lighting accessories
available, as well as an increased number of vision tools and enhanced
communication capabilities,” he says.
For more on machine vision, visit
www.bannerengineering.com.
