Customer Information:

Mitchel & Scott Machine Company is a manufacturer of precision machined components. Over the past 78 years, Mitchel & Scott has become a leader in the precision machined components industry, serving a variety of industries, including agriculture, transportation, construction, power generation, industrial, HVAC, hydraulic, and automotive. Mitchel & Scott currently employs over 200 people, operating out of a 200,000+ square foot facility in Indianapolis, IN.

Background:

Mitchel & Scott recently moved into the automotive industry, winning a contract to supply parts to a Tier 1 automotive supplier. This customer required 100% inspection of several critical part features, including internal thread pitch and depth, as well as 19 external geometric features.

Problem:

The complexity of the inspection, coupled with the required production rate (35 seconds per part), made it impossible to perform this inspection manually.

Manual Inspection Tooling: The inspection performed by Compass Automation's automated vision inspection and thread checker system was performed manually prior to installation. Performing this inspection manually requires multiple operators and a wide variety of tooling and gages (shown here).

Solution:

Compass provided a custom-designed, automated vision inspection and thread checker system, in-line with Mitchel & Scott's existing machining center. The machining center includes an out-feed conveyor, which delivers completed parts to the automated system. The automated system performs the following functions:  

1. An in-feed nest accepts parts from the conveyor, utilizing a proximity sensor to alert the robot of part presence in the nest

2. The robot moves the part to a blow-off station, which removes excess cutting fluid from the part

3. The robot moves the part to the New Vista Thread Verification Unit for inspection; this unit tests the pitch and depth of the part's internal threads

4. The robot moves the part to the vision inspection station, where a custom-designed inspection system measures several geometric features on the part, including diameters, heights, etc. This system includes:

   • IMPERX 16 Megapixel Bobcat Camera

   • Opto-Engineering Collimated Illuminator

   • Custom-designed Hypercentric lens

   • Custom software to incorporate all requisite measurement tools

5. The robot moves the part to an out-feed conveyor for post-processing and packaging