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Issue link: https://mms.epubxp.com/i/802599
mmsonline.com April 2017 MMS 83 FEATURE and other defects can always cause problems with grinding, causing bad parts in the pipeline. That's unacceptable." The problem was that the most obvious means of separating the parts were unfeasible, at least at breakneck speed, he says. They're too small and light weight for pick and place. Any thing involving magnets might result in parts sticking together af ter the grind. The engineering and applications teams considered various types of conveyors, but most threatened to physically impede the path of the laser and camera scans. Even systems without such problems offered no way to guarantee proper part orientation. This is critical because laser measurement works essentially by casting a shadow, one that can obscure out-of-round portions of a part's profile directly in the path of the beam, Mr. Bannayan explains. Thus, get ting a true reading would require either rotating parts within the beam or finding another way. The team chose the latter. PEZ DISPENSERS AND PORCUPINES Giving up on the idea of spinning the part within the beam required rethinking the fundamentals of the laser station measurement. With minds open to all possibilities, team members investi- gated various equipment and processes before set tling on a Zumbach ODAC Trio. Designed primarily for extrusion lines, this laser unit required f i r m w a r e t w e a k s t o w o r k w i t h d i s c r e t e Vibratory-bowl feeders provide an effective means of funneling masses of parts into the singulation systems located before and after the grind. The singulation system and inverted conveyor occupied a significant amount of the integration team's time, to the point that engineers began to refer to these units as "the Pez dispenser" and "the porcupine," respectively. Workpieces that fail pre- grind inspection are diverted down the clear tubes by air blasts before they can enter the grinder (hence the empty conveyor finger visible here).