<title>Machine vision inspection of technical ceramics</title>

Abstract

Coors Ceramics Company produces flat rectangular ceramic substrates for technical applications. Presently, finished substrates are inspected by human inspectors for dimensional tolerance and for the absence of a variety of possible surface defects. In a two-phase effort, we developed a system that could measure part dimensional parameters and inspect for surface defects. Dimensional parameters include part width, length, edge straightness, and corner perpendicularity. Surface defects include surface contamination, blemishes, open cracks, edge chips, burrs, pits, dents, ridges, blisters, and hairline cracks. We employed highly parallel pipeline image processing hardware to achieve a throughput rate of 1 part every 2 seconds.