Manufacturing Technology

GEFRA has been developing and manufacturing the well known brand OPTISORT for more than 20 years, working with leading fastener companies worldwide who have come to rely on OPTISORT’s quality control.

GEFRA GmbH points out that the high demands of end user customers make it necessary to continually expand the possibilities of the inspecting criteria. Today, it is not enough to measure the parts and inspect the surface for scratches, coating defects and cracks. That is why GEFRA offers a wide range of additional features to meet customers’ high demands, including:

• LineScan for measuring the flatness of stamping parts.
• Eddy current for checking hardness.
• Shape from shading (SFS) for inspecting the smallest surface defects.

All of these additional functions from GEFRA can be added to the standard inspection system without losing capacity and customers still benefit from the same easy handling they are used to with the AutoControl software.

During the optical inspection the control for hardness (yes/no) will be done with a coil for stamping parts. The structure of the parts will be continuously inspected with 8 frequencies at a speed of up to 500 parts per minute. GEFRA highlights that the calibration of the hardness test is also easy and user- friendly.

Shape from shading (SFS)
In the SFS method, four grey value images of a surface are taken with illumination from various directions. Using the differences in the grey values, images of the surface are calculated, which reflect the spatial structure, as well as texture. However, with the SFS process users do not receive any explicit height values, but only information regarding incline and curvature of the surface. For this reason, this technique is only recommended for surface inspection.

“The big advantage of SFS is in the fact that with highly reflective surfaces, topology features can be clearly separated from texture (brightness) characteristics and high-resolution intensity images can be created,” mentions GEFRA.