Manipulators, robotics and system solutions
handling award for small parts handling using machine vision
An image processing system enables the fully automated alignment of partially coated valve seat balls for directional laser welding. The handling award jury awarded this solution from Robert Bosch first place in the Manipulators, Robotics and System Solutions category.
In the production of modern high-pressure petrol injectors, sealing seat balls with small diameters (three millimetres) are spatially aligned and laser-welded onto a needle pin with a high degree of angular accuracy. Some of the balls are covered with a coating, which is important for a stable and durable injector function.
Image processing-supported handling of the ball ensures the correct position of the uncoated surface in the area of the weld seam as well as the functional area of the coating within the injector seal seat. The combination of image processing and handling technology makes it possible to feed and align partially coated balls fully automatically in a short cycle time of less than six seconds.
During handling, alignment is carried out using an integrated rotation or projected translation concept, which is controlled step-by-step via an image processing system to detect the current ball orientation and calculate the position corrections. The balls are then fed into the laser welding process in the correct position with high angular accuracy and welded onto the needle pin in a reliable process.
To ensure production quality, additional image processing systems are used after each process step (alignment, positioning, laser welding), which are embedded in a smart factory environment and enable the measurement and inspection results obtained to be assigned to the product in a partially specific manner.
The fully automated interaction of fast handling with intelligent image processing offers cost and quality advantages over a production sequence in which the finished welded assembly is coated outside the automated value stream. The main benefits are a simplified and more productive coating process and savings in logistical effort. With this solution, balls and needles are not handled together as an assembly; instead, the ball is handled and coated as a bulk material. The camera and lighting are standardized components.
The alignment station consists of a base plate, which is mounted on a cross table that can be moved dynamically in two perpendicular directions and on which the partially coated sphere rests, as well as a transparent plastic guide. This guide serves as a holder and as a passive lighting element for the correct illumination of the sphere. The translational movement of the base plate rotates the sphere held in the guide hole to align its position. The camera and lighting of the machine vision system are mounted coaxially to the guide bore above the ball in order to detect the ball orientation and process it further via a PC-based image processing system. The position of the uncoated ball surface detected by the image processing system is used to calculate the translational alignment movements required to correct the angular deviation. pb
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