High Throughput Piston Inspection

Pistons enter the machine on a free-running conveyor. The pistons are flipped and fed into four different staging positions. An overhead gantry robot picks the parts and transfers them to four inspection spindles. Each spindle has its own Grafal patch and groove inspection camera. Inspection results are summarized on the camera. Upon inspection completion, the disposition of each part is relayed to the robot controller. The gantry robot picks the pistons and deposits them on to one of two conveyors—one for good parts, the other for bad parts. Good parts travel down a conveyor where an ink jet barcode is applied. The barcode is then validated with machine vision.