Surface inspections for reliable quality control

Micro-Epsilon: Thermal imaging cameras inspect the surfaces of materials and workpieces, enabling the quality of components to be assessed. The thermoIMAGER IR cameras are used particularly when the surface contrast is not sufficient for other measuring methods to allow a well-founded evaluation.

Different temperatures in a workpiece can be an indication of faulty production. Thermal imaging cameras visualize these so that workpieces can be automatically checked for various geometrical features or conclusions can be drawn about their quality. Therefore, these measuring systems must meet the requirements in terms of thermal resolution, real-time capability, compact design and robustness in demanding, industrial environments.

The "imess" company relies on the thermoIMAGER series of thermal imaging cameras from Micro-Epsilon in its inline inspection machines for quality control and dimensional accuracy testing. With its turnkey systems, imess serves numerous industries and applications.

This is how, for example, air bubbles are reliably detected as these heat up faster than the rest of the material when a workpiece is heated. This allows air bubbles to be detected, localized and even measured in terms of their size.

With strip materials that pass through the production process at high speed, defects are reliably detected. An example of error checking using IR cameras are seams in plastic film welding. Immediately after the welding process, these have a higher temperature and can be evaluated with regard to various inspection characteristics, for example number, width or defects such as interruptions.

The thermoIMAGER cameras inspect even the temperature distribution and geometries. The temperature monitoring of a workpiece during the hardening process of, e.g., cast and forged parts such as springs allows conclusions to be drawn about the subsequent component stability. At the same time, the dimensional accuracy can also be determined via defined test points. In punching processes, components such as stabilizers are analyzed with regard to their temperature before and after punching. Due to the strong contrast to the cold environment, geometrical features can also be precisely determined.