Student Projects
Contact Information
University and Department: University of Michigan
Team Members: Mandar Gokhale (Testing and Implementation), Tony Nalli, Michael Luginbill, Joe Shaktman, Ian Lind
Faculty Advisors: Dr. Yoram Koren, Dr. Reuven Katz, Dr. Hagay Bamberger, Dr. En Hong
Primary Email Address: mandarg@umich.edu
Primary Telephone Number: 1-734-709-6620
Project Information
Project Title:
Experimentation : Turntable, Pulnix TMC 4200CL Camera, LabVIEW 8.5
Implementation : DC motor (Chrysler), movable mount, setup for mounting crankshaft, NI USB controller, Tektronix stepper motor with 10A-TTL-3SW controller, Pulnix TMC 4200CL camera
Describe the challenge your project is trying to solve.
Our project aims to automate crankshaft polish inspection for factory Quality Control purposes.
Describe how you addressed the challenge through your project.
The challenge was to visually inspect crankshafts for polishing using a camera in less than 20 seconds. The way in which we addressed this challenge was divided into two parts :
1.Experimentation:
We placed the crankshafts on a turntable, and inspected the resulting brightness level for pins and mains using a camera. We built a LabVIEW VI to automate the process of moving the turntable through 306 degrees with 1 degree increments. This enabled us to find the optimum angles for detection.
2. Implementation:
In this part, the a team consisting of students from the ME 450 design course built a setup to mount the crankshaft, and move the camera along its length. Pictures were taken by the camera only when the crankshaft had reached a certain angle. (The angles had been determined in the experimentation described previously.). Thus, we were able to inspect all the pins and mains of the crankshaft to determine whether it was polished properly or not. The control of the movement of the crankshaft was done using digital outputs from a NI USB controller fed to a rotary position encoder (to rotate the crankshaft), and a stepper motor, with controller (to move the camera along the length of the crankshaft.). The crankshaft was illuminated using blue light from a
Photos
Mandar Gokhale with the crankshaft setup
Videos
Some videos made by the ME 450 team who built the final setup.
Video #1
Video #2
Therefore, we think our project has been a fairly good implementation of a simple, yet important concept. We are sure it shall be put to good use by the automotive manufacturing industry for QC purposes.
