Machine Vision Turbine Blade Inspection in the UK & Far East
Aerospace — turbine blade inspection — UK and Far East requirement satisfied.
In conjunction with one of our automation company partners, on this occasion PCE Automation, we created and installed on site in the UK and the Far East complete turnkey inspection units using multi-axis motion and machine vision for a demanding aeronautical inspection application. Our customer is a worldwide leader not only in the aerospace, defence and prestige automotive fields, and of course demanded the highest levels of technology and performance to satisfy their application.
In this instance, the component for inspection is the turbine blade for an aeronautical engine.
The problem
The turbine blades are made from a series of components which are bonded together. The key element, the one which involved us, is the root bond line of the entire blade to the root component which connects it to the engine. Prior to our automated machine vision inspection system, the root bond line was inspected by human eye using micro binoculars. The requirement was to create a consistent automated system which could provide reliable information upon which a human pass/fail judgement could be made.
The solution
Fisher Smith designed a custom software package to customer specification, providing all the functionality required to interface to the motion system, acquire images, process images and interface to the customer manufacturing network.
The system utilises a high precision 4-axis motion system to accurately control the scanning of the bond line using a line scan camera, telecentric lens and dark-field illumination. The bond line is scanned to a 0.005mm resolution.