Bore Clean & Vision Inspection
Background:
A recent customer is a global leader in automotive safety systems. As a top supplier of automotive safety systems, they are constantly trying to cut down on material costs and manual assembly time for their products. One of their products is a brake caliper housing assembly.
The Challenge:
Our customer was having problems with debris getting in to the machined grooves and bores within their brake caliper housing, and the tracking and verification of good and bad parts. Debris could cause the seal around the piston to be cut or improperly installed, which could result in leakage around the piston. Without proper labeling and verification of good and bad parts, They were unable to track where the problems were occurring most frequently.
Our customer needed to reduce these problematic areas to cut down on wasteful material costs, breakdown and reassembly labor costs, and decrease any chance for human error.
The Journey:
Our customer first attempted to solve this problem on their own by putting the brake caliper housing through a washer station, but that still could potentially lead to a build up of residue that affected the groove, bore, and seal.
The only vision verification they had was an operator looking in to the bore, but the debris that could negatively affect the seal is not always a visible object. This attempt at visual inspection and verification failed because it allowed too much room for human error.
Our customer needed an automated Bore Clean & Vision Inspection station to ensure a cost-effective operation, from start to finish.
The Solution:
Edgewater Automation designed and built a stand-alone machine to clean and inspect the caliper bores.
Edgewater took care of the cleaning process first by designing and building a blower/vacuum station that moves air in a circular motion in the bore to loosen any debris, then the vacuum is enabled in order to remove all the loose debris.
For the visual inspection stage, Edgewater automatically lowered a vision sight pipe in to the bore to verify that the groove is clear of debris and is properly in-place.
Edgewater implemented a barcode and labeling station for tracking and verification purposes.
Benefits:
Enabling our customer to automate the seal installation and inspection process has allowed them to detect problems before they waste time and money on break-down and re-assembly operations and material costs.
