Metrology Process to Produce High-Value Components and Reduce Waste for the Fourth Industrial Revolution

Abstract

Conventionally, a manufactured product undergoes a quality control process. The quality control department mostly ensures that the dimensions of the manufactured products are within the desired range, i.e., the product either satisfies the defined conformity range or is rejected. Failing to satisfy the conformity range increases the manufacturing cost and harms the production rate and the environment. Conventional quality control departments take samples from the given batch after the manufacturing process. This, in turn, has two consequences, i.e., low-quality components being delivered to the customer and input energy being wasted in the rejected components. The aim of this paper is to create a high-precision measuring (metrology)-based system that measures the dimension of an object in real time during the machining process. This is accomplished by integrating a vision-based system with image processing techniques in the manufacturing process. Experiments were planned using an experimental design which included different lightning conditions, camera locations, and revolutions per minute (rpm) values. Using the proposed technique, submillimeter dimensional accuracy was achieved at all the measured points of the component in real time. Manual validation and statistical analysis were performed to check the validity of the system.