Non-contact laser distance sensors were selected to measure the position of the mold with each placement with the pneumatic arm.  The installation puts the device several inches away from the moving mechanical parts.  The glass optics of the unit are kept clean with a  pressurized air knife.

          

Recently, a client forwarded Acuity samples of their translucent adhesive material to verify that the AccuProfile 820-20 could measure the complex surface atop various substrates.

          

A global manufacturer of self-contained drill rigs uses the AccuRange 1000 laser distance sensor to automatically gage the depth of drilled holes.  Their drill rigs are equipped with powerful down-the-hole hammers for high-capacity rock drilling in quarries, opencast mines and construction projects.  The operator, sitting in a climate-controlled cabin, can know the exact hole depth on a digital console display.

The AR1000 has a nearly concentric optics path to measure down narrow holes.  The range is up to 30 meters and the sensor will hold 2 mm of accuracy.  Contact Acuity for more information.

          

Steel mills producing large coils of sheet stock store their inventory on the floors of huge warehouses.  The large, heavy coils are picked and placed using overhead cranes, often referred to as bridge cranes.  These cranes ride the length of the building along two, parallel rails.  A hoist moves on the trolley and lowers a hook or other mechanical grabber to move objects.  Operators control the crane’s movement via an overhead control cabin or by remote-control from on manufacturing floor.

Modern factories automate the pick and place of their inventory in 3D space by equipping their overhead cranes with multiple laser distance sensors.  This automates the gross movements of the crane and minimizes the time to locate and move a particular piece of inventory.  A common application is in steel mills, where building lengths often exceed 250 meters.  The AccuRange 3000 sensor measures the position of the crane’s trolley along these longest stretches.  Side-to-side position and the hoist’s vertical position are accurately monitored by AccuRange 1000 laser distance sensors.  These models are well-suited for industrial environments and interface directly with system PLC’s using analog and serial outputs.  Today’s mills retrofit manual-control cranes with automation systems employing laser positioning sensors.

Acuity manufactures and sells the AccuRange™ brand of laser rangefinders, which use time-of-flight measurement principles to detect a target’s position or displacement.  The device models offer a variety of ranges, accuracies and speeds to suit a variety of industrial automation projects.

For more information about this or similar application, contact Acuity.

          

a surface or object.  The image of this line is viewed by a high-accuracy CCD array.  Height positions are calculated across this line and transmitted over an Ethernet line to a PC computer.  The scanner is moved relative to the key on a small stage.  The linear encoder position of the stage is tracked directly by the scanner head and included in the data stream.  For more information, contact Acuity.

          

The design integrators selected the Acuity laser rangefinders to monitor the position of the elevator and hence control the scroll position of the illuminated text.  The laser rangefinders were installed in base of the elevator shaft and aimed upward to a target affixed to the bottom of the elevator cart.  Sampling at 100 Hz, the positional data was used in the software controlling the visual display.  For more information, contact Acuity.

          

The size and shape of the part presented several challenges for using a line sensor.  The small part had rather tiny features and that is why engineers chose the most accurate model of Acuity laser line sensor because it could resolve the tiny features of the part.  That the area of interest was located within the cup-shaped part also presented challenges for applying the line sensor which relies on triangulation measurement principles.  Although it was simple to project the laser line across the target, the height of the part’s walls would block the view by the detector.  This is why simple laser triangulation sensors can not be used to measure down narrow bore holes, tubes, etc.  The laser may reach the target, but the detector can’t see because the height of the walls occlude its view.  To overcome this occlusion, the laser line sensor was deliberately tilted so that there was an unobstructed path for both the emitted and reflected beams.

The engineers concluded that the Acuity line sensor was a viable sensor solution for measuring such an intricate part.  For more information, please contact Acuity.

          

In the first step of the pipe fabrication process, a large, 12-m long carbon steel sheet is fed into a press which bends both edges with a slight radius of curvature.  Precision molds sandwich the material at high pressure to introduce the appropriate bend.  The system bends 3-m sections of steel at a time and a conveyor advances the material through the process until the full length of sheet has been bent.  The edge bend introduces a curve approximately 40 mm from the edge, leaving a straight tail at the very edge.

In subsequent steps, the steel sheet is further formed into a tube by using other presses.  Only at the end, the round structure is completed by welding the original edges.  The initial edge bend is critical to final gap alignment for successful welding and proper pipe dimensions and straightness.

The prior method for measuring / verifying the dimensions of the steel sheet edge was manual in nature.  Line workers would use a combination of templates, “feeler gages” and a ruler to verify the radius of the bend in the metal as well as the length of the straight tail between the end of the bend and the edge of the sheet.  Certainly, this method was operator dependent and subject to great variability and innaccuracy.  Over time, the template becomes deformed and worn and defeats the purpose for its initial use.

Replacing the manual verification methods was the implementation of non-contact scanning technology.  A 2D profile-scanning laser is installed aboave the edge and projects a wide laser line across the steel surface.  As the material passes beneath the scanner, it’s dimensional shape profile is captured by the sensor’s CMOS detector array.  This X Z position information is transmitted via Ehternet interface to a PC computer that hosts measurement algorithms (software) which automatically analyzes the high-speed data and calculates the radius of curvature and the length of the straigh tail of steel sheet edge.  At full speed, the laser scanner captures up to 250 profiles per second.

Integrators will install pairs of laser scanners along each edge to measure the desired dimensional information and to track the edge positions to ensure that the sheet is centered along the fabrication process.  Because the scanner captures both depth position and field of view, the representation of the profile is not susceptible to slight material vibrations as it is conveyed through the process by the roller bed.  The video below illustrates the entire process and the implementation of the AccuProfile Scanners in this application.  Contact Acuity with questions.