Inspection

Manufacturers checking parts by eye today: machined parts, castings, molded plastics, welds, electronics, medical devices, assemblies and labeled packaging. Typical checks include surface defects, missing features, presence and orientation of components, and label accuracy.

Inspection cameras are light, so reach and part size drive the choice more than payload. Spark suits small parts at a bench. Core covers most inspection cells. Thor reaches around large parts or across a wider fixture.

Because sustained visual inspection is hard for anyone. In a Sandia National Laboratories study, 82 trained inspectors caught 85% of defective parts and wrongly rejected 35% of good ones, close to the roughly 80% industry average Sandia cites. A robot applies the same criteria to every part, every shift, and frees your inspectors to judge the borderline cases.

A fixed camera sees one side of a part from one angle, so it can miss 3D features, undercuts and defects on other faces. A robot moves the camera around the part and views it from as many angles as the check needs. One cell can also inspect several part numbers without re-mounting cameras.