Development of Automatic Inspection System for Full Mold Patterns

Full mold casting is superior to wooden mold casting in accuracy, cost, and large iron casting, and is mainly used in metal molds for automobiles and machining parts. The most important operation of full mold casting is close inspection of EPS patterns. We developed a new automatic system and succeeded to mostly automating this work. Multiple photographs of patterns and composites are stored on a PC. Inspection involves comparing composite photographs of the patterns with 3D CAD data originating with the pattern. This enabled us to greatly improve inspection accuracy over manual inspection. We also developed a robot to shoot photographs automatically, shortening the time needed for shooting. The few problems this new system has will be resolved in the near future.