QC just got easier: Inspection Efficiency

An ongoing problem for shops is finding burrs, foreign objects and debris (FOD), and other defects in their finished parts. This is especially the case when defects not only are costly but present risks to health and safety.

All Axis Robotics has solved this problem by developing the Automated Burr/FOD and Defect Detection System, which uses collaborative robots from Universal Robots A/S, Odense, Denmark.

Founder and CEO Gary Kuzmin said motivation for developing the system came when sister company All Axis Machining built a complicated aerospace product for a customer that needed the parts to be free of all burrs and rolled edges. The company thought that it had met the specifications, but the customer—which had 20 QC inspectors for incoming products—expressed concern about burrs that could dislodge, causing system failure.

All Axis Robotics has made it easier to detect burrs, foreign objects and debris, and other defects. Image courtesy of Axis Robotics

In response, All Axis upgraded its inspection microscopes. But it realized that operator fatigue becomes a factor after about 20 minutes when conducting manual inspection. “Once fatigue sets in,” Kuzmin said, “you’re not as sharp detecting burrs, FOD and other defects.”

All Axis then added employees to develop systems and supporting software. Two years later, the company had a new system for detecting burrs. “As we developed the product,” Kuzmin said, “we realized it wasn’t only capable of detecting burrs but also of detecting defects and anomalies in a whole class of undesirable artifacts left over from the manufacturing process.”

These defects included rolled edges, improperly installed hardware, tangs in the helicoils, missing hardware and material defects, such as cracks and poor gasket integrity.