Saccade Vision and its partner Euclid Labs have announced the sale of 3D inspection systems for metalworking to a multinational conglomerate involved in industrial engineering and steel production.
The system is designed to inspect 100 per cent of machined parts after processing. The parts are inspected by the same robot that is used to load and unload parts into and out of the metalworking machine.
Saccade Vision’s system uses a micro-electromechanical system (MEMS) laser illumination module as a light source that is able to scan in multiple directions. It’s similar technology to that used in solid-state lidar modules for autonomous vehicles.
Not only can the direction of the scan be optimised so that the part doesn’t have to be rotated to get a different viewing angle, but the system can vary the resolution, scanning the entire part at low resolution and then honing in on certain areas at very high resolution.
Saccade says its triangulation approach offers the equivalent of 100 million 3D points for regional scanning.
Roberto Polesel, CEO of Euclid Labs, explained the system the two companies developed for metalwork inspection: ‘Euclid Labs is taking care of making the sensor easy to integrate for inline inspections with an initial focus on checking flanges and angles of metal sheet parts after a bending process, and on checking assembly processes of multiple items. When adopting software-defined manufacturing, we need to get rid of an inspection based on a collection of single measurements performed with multiple tools.’
He continued: ‘We have seen applications with three smart cameras and 10 distance sensors to verify a mechanical assembly. With Saccade we can check at each step the single volume we need and refer that to the most meaningful part of the object we are checking, having full 3D information without the burden of scanning and elaborating a large set of data. And we can program a new set of inspections with few clicks, which has a great impact on risks when dealing with new projects.’
Alex Shulman, co-founder and CEO of Saccade Vision, said: ‘During a short time, we were able to demonstrate value and become trusted by one of the world’s largest industrial companies. We are also on track to introduce Saccade’s inspection system later this year together with Euclid Labs on one of the leading metalworking machines.’
