The inspection system captures image of each drill or mill tool and also reads its weight. Geometrical dimensions of the particular tool are then measured from the image. Then it is possible to calculate material type and also the area of coated parts of the tool from the dimensions and weight. Each tool is identified and characteristic dimensions are checked.

The first precondition for achieving of high precision is capturing of high-quality, high-resolution image, not distorted by noise or lossy compression. This particular system uses 2 MPx DataCam DC 2000 digital USB camera, which fulfills all requirements with wide margins.

Then it is necessary to eliminate all lens aberrations and radial image distortions, distortions caused by perspective projections and lighting effects. Precise, but huge and expensive telecentric lens significantly rises the application cost. This particular application employs rather common Fujinon lens with C- mount. All image distortions caused by lens and perspective projections are eliminated with sub-pixel precision using image processing components of the Control Web software. All these processing results into absolute precision and reproducibility around 0.03 mm. Tools can be measured with similar precision anywhere within the camera field of view.

Thanks to Control Web rapid application development system this application can be easily integrated into any enterprise information system. Control Web application is also easily maintainable and extensible.

The whole application demonstrates the capabilities of the DataCam cameras integrated with Control Web image processing components to create high-quality solutions with very affordable prices.

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