Ι Automated inspection of railway carriage body

This article in Russian

The traditional methods of geometrical parametersinspection which are used in mechanical engineering, are based on using contact hand-held measuring tools. These methods are very labour-consuming. Not only it is necessary to have a variety of proper tools, but also the quality of inspection strongly depends on the qualification of the operator. Portable industrial CMMs such as absolute laser trackers are being integrated by manufacturers with the aim to reduce labor inputs while maintaining objective measurement results. One of the perfect examples of automated metrology is the measurement system based on two components:

Main goals

  • To eliminate human factor *
  • To get objective inspection results
  • To automate the creation of digital geometrical inspection report
  • To expand the inspection chart **

*Operator’s personal experience can strongly influence the result achieved by using hand-held measuring tools such as probes, rulers and calipers.

**Not only to inspect local areas of carriage body, but also to control the general shape of body’s sidewalls using proper alignment.

System overview

  • The first-in-class scanning Absolute Tracker Leica ATS600
  • Polyworks | Inspector applied metrological SW
  • Customer tailored SW module "TVZ Automation" (developed by IMS Center)

Leica Absolute Tracker ATS600 is the core of the system. ATS600 delivers high accuracy 3D point cloud directly on the object’s surface which helps to analyze the shape of carriage body and its geometrical parameters. The key feature of the tracker is the possibility to scan with metrological accuracy. There is also no need to prepare or spray the inspected part. Since Leica ATS600 is also a classical laser tracker it is possible to perform high accuracy measurements with a reflector.

Reflector measurements of reference network points are used for automated tracker relocation and realignment to control both sidewalls. The automated relocation feature makes it possible to inspect large objects without any combined point cloud accuracy losses and without excessive labor input.

Software stack

The state-of-art product of the Canadian company Innovmetric - PolyWorks | Inspector software is used for collection of measurement data and its subsequent analysis.

Scripting and SDK toolkit in PolyWorks | Inspector powers up the automation of any geometrical parameters inspection process. PolyWorks | Inspector easily handles heavy point clouds with tens of millions of points.

IMS Center team developed and implemented the customer tailored software product - the module «TVZ Automation». The main goal of this module is to reduce the requirements to operator qualification and programmer experience and to eliminate human factor from the control process as much as possible. The software user interface is simple and understandable even for unskilled personnel. The system operator does not need to have experience with any measuring system or special SW.

The software module «TVZ Automation» is a control plugin for PolyWorks | Inspector with a thoroughly designed user interface customized to solve particular task.

The measurement process is fully automated. The operator only needs to move the laser tracker to the pre-designated positions at the control site. When the master SW module is launched the system loads the reference data from the Polyworks | Inspector master-project. After that automatic measurements of reference network points starts. Alignment to the carriage body is also automated. The system guides the operator through all measurement steps with detailed instructions. When the process of determining the carriage body position is completed, the automatic scanning process starts. The pre-defined scanning regions are loaded automatically from the master-project. The analysis module processes measurement data and creates the final report automatically.

Results

As a result of the integration of the system based on Leica ATS600 tracker powered up by Polyworks | Inspector software module «TVZ Automation»:

  • The control of the entire surface of the carriage body became possible, not just local areas as before
  • Automatically generated report provides objective information about the carriage body shape and other geometrical parameters
  • Polygonal body model can be used for a comprehensive analysis of the manufactured products quality

IMS Center team is able to solve any task related to automation of geometrical parameters control of any object in any area of industry.