Design and development of an automated scanning inspection station

General Shale Brick company has recently decided to fully automate their brick manufacturing facilities to reduce cost and improve quality control. At the Corbin, Ky., General Shale Brick manufacturing facility, only the brick dehacking process remains as an unautomated process where human workers are required to perform the physically demanding task. With General Shale's push for total automation, automation of the dehacking process is the goal. In order to accomplish this task, General Shale has teamed up with the University of Tennessee and ARTECH to develop an automated dehacking system. ARTECH has developed the automated unloading, blending and packaging system (BUPS) which performs the majority of the dehacking task. As a supplement to this, the University of Tennessee Mechanical and Aerospace and Engineering Science Department in conjunction with the Electrical Engineering Department have developed the first phase of an automatic inspection station for brick in which 2 mm cracks or larger are detected as defective. The first phase of development of the inspection station included the design and development of the overall system requirements, control system architecture and positioning mechanism. In order to accomplish this phase of the project, a feasibility study, System Design Requirements (SDR), conceptual and preliminary design and finally the detailed design have been completed. The flexible design of the inspection station was based on common and conservative design practices that are found throughout industry. As a result of this development, the selected positioning mechanism is two parallel linear actuators powered with a single servo DC motor. The two linear actuators are mechanically linked together, and 24 volt fail-safe brakes have been implemented. Each of the linear actuators are toothed belt driven units that are completely enclosed to reduce the possibility of contamination. The controller for this system has been selected as a PC based architecture with PCI and ISA card compatibility. The mechanical design of the inspection station has resulted in the generation of AutoCAD drawings which are given in Chapter 6. In addition to the mechanical design, the controller has been designed with a double Pl (Proportional and Integral) compensator such that the system has the desired response characteristics for the inspection process.