Zeiss O-Inspect System

[[Si...]]

Hi,

I was wondering what this system can do in terms of what Products can be measured. See the attached image for an example. It is a Dovetail feature that in on the face of the part. So it would be in the Z+ Direction. Would the O-Inspect be capable of inspecting features like this? Or is it mainly used for Thru Bores and Edges, Like an Optical Comparator already does.

We are having issues with a slide fixture not fitting over the Dovetail and the old comparator we have isn't accurate enough due to the length of the part and the light reflection. So would the O-Inspect, or any 3D Imaging Systems out there be able to get around all 180 degrees (X + and X- Positions) to get the angle and edge breaks?

Thanks in advance.

Dove Tail.png

[[No...]]

If the machine looks at the dovetail from the same direction as on your picture and you use the light from below, I see no problem. But if you need light from above it's difficult to say without seeing the real part.
Our O-Inspect 322 is an older model (compared to what recent product docs show) and its light from above is very weak in terms of versatility. It's often very hard to create reliable bright/dark transitions because there are not enough LEDs and the angle they are mounted under is much too steep. We have the machine since 2013 or so, but even today I still don't really like it. There were many times when I struggled for hours to get the lighting of a certain part right, only to find out in the end that it was impossible or too unreliable.
I think it was for a reason when the guy at the demonstration said "Use the tactile probe as long as possible and only switch to the optics if the probe can't measure it". How right he was....
Another point is that I think Calypso just wasn't made for optical measurement. Simple tasks are no problem, but if you try more complex things, like rotational patterns, parameters, self-seeking edges etc. you may run into several annoying quirks that only exist in the optical part of Calypso.

Recent product sheets show a modified lighting unit, but I don't know if and what was improved.

[[La...]]

It's really interesting to hear that, Norbert. I've been working on O-Inspect systems since 2013 and while the lighting has definitely improved recently, I wonder if you're using all of the tools available to you to get the best results possible. Do you use the edge analysis tool, or adjust threshold values? I find those 2 things help me the most when making a measurement plan using something that is hard to pick up optically.

[[No...]]

I know these tools, but they are rarely of much help to me. Maybe it's because we measure plastic parts where most surfaces have an EDM finish, edges have rounded corners and many materials show a varying amount of reflections. All this together makes it hard to determine reliably THE spot where an edge begins or ends. The only solution would be a more flexible lighting system, for example with more LED segments and seperate rings mounted under different angles.
But I'm also not satisfied with Calypso's optical features. All our inspection programs are used with Autorun by untrained personnel. For many simple parts I don't (want to) use a complicated fixture as it would only obscure the part. But I also don't want untrained people to manually align a part optically when they are not 100% sure what they're doing. (think of high magnifications where you don't always know what edge you're looking at). So I often make self-aligning programs. The operator just places the part against an angled stop and the program seeks the right edges by itself, starting from the intersection point of the angle. For this I often need additional coordinate systems, formulas, patterns etc.

I often run into a situation where Calypso is unable to position the view at the right edge in manual mode because of a mismatch between the base alignment (to which everything refers in the camera view) and the additional coordinate system. So it may happen that when I need to correct my lighting, Calypso positions the view to "nowhere" because the element of interest has a different coordinate system. If formulas and patterns are involved too, it may even be impossible to get the position of autofocus AOIs right. Then I have to use a lot of annoying tricks to make my programs working. One time I even had to edit the inspection file directly, since this is where Calypso stores the offset between the view center and the mouse-clicked position of the AOI, and you can't get rid of it any other way. That offset led to problems in my program, so I had to zero it somehow. Since then I leave all autofocus AOIs where they first appear and instead move the view to place them where they belong. Saves me a lot of trouble.