Tone Ionut-Nicusor

Design and Manufacturing in Automotive, DMA

University of Craiova
Faculty of Mechanical Engineering
DMA-Design and Manufacturing in Automotive Engineering
2nd Year of Study, 1st Semester

Mitrache
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Advanced Robotics

Prof. Dr. Ing. Cojocaru Dorin

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Student. Tone Ionut
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Design and Manufacturing in Automotive, DMA

Machine Vision System:

Barcode Reader

In the automotive industry, even minor malfunctions may lead to grave

accidents. The demands for quality and accuracy are high, and inspection
standards are set high to meet them. Car generally consists of over 30,000 parts,
including tiny bolts. The number of parts is increasing due to
multifunctionalization. It is not easy to perfectly inspect these parts and manage
the information.
For manufacturers of finished cars, it is imperative to quickly identify the
extent of the impact when recalls are issued and collect the relevant products.
Otherwise, the company will suffer great losses and their brand will be
damaged. In Japan, the End-of-Life Vehicles Recycling Law was enacted in few
years ago and recycling of materials such as airbags and CFCs has been made
compulsory. Consequently, it is urgent that traceability covering not only
manufacturing of parts and assembly of whole vehicles but also maintenance,
inspection and vehicle disposal.
The need for a database of inspection results and other information is thus
increasing year after year. Image processing has been getting attention as a way
to achieve this. It is expected that replacing inspections that rely on human eyes
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Design and Manufacturing in Automotive, DMA

and experience with image processing will increase efficiency and achieve
both cost reduction and accuracy improvement.

One of the most common applications is the 1D/2D Barcode Camera reader.
In automotive applications, it provides a wide range of benefits that assure
compliance to quality standards and requirements such as traceability, in case of

customer complaints, matching the barcode with every step of the production
process and associated components used for the final product, error proofing
device-so that a component with a NOK(Not Okay) history from a previous
process step cannot pass the further process step.
As an example, I will shortly describe a barcode scanner used in tire
producing industry: a tire barcode scanner at the end of the line check. When it
comes to codes on tire rims, the position varies according to the tire size.

The system involves a Keyence camera from SR-2000 Series— equipped

with a class-leading 3.1 megapixel high-sensitivity CMOS sensor—is easily
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Design and Manufacturing in Automotive, DMA

able to handle varying code positions, from tires for smaller vehicles to truck
tires.

The tires are directed to the EoL check via an automated conveyor. Before
getting inside the checking machine’s chambers, the barcode is scanned and the
containing information is processed with the help of a related software. The
history from the previous steps is processed, so as the scanner acts itself as an

Error Proofing device: if any nonconformity from the previous processes is

discovered, the machine will not proceed to the EoL check and will alert the
operator that something is wrong, preventing nonconform products to be
delivered to the customer.
Furthermore, the vision system verifies if the position of the barcode is within
the acceptable tolerances. If not, the barcode cannot be read, so the tire is
automatically removed from the conveyor and the nonconformity is treated and
resolved by the Quality Department: either the barcode label is sent to the
rework area where qualified operators manually replace the barcode to the exact
location limit, either the barcode is scanned with a manual scanner. Verification
according to standard-specified print quality criteria The SR-2000 Series offers
a code verification function for tasks with growing importance including
ensuring reading stability in later processes and offering support for print
quality control requests from suppliers. Complying with the new ISO/IEC
15416 standard, this function verifies both 2D codes and barcodes for a wide
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Design and Manufacturing in Automotive, DMA

range of code verification support. This function can also be used for both
“offline” and “inline” production.

A last function of the vision system is that it is able to detect if there is

missing information from the barcode label. As an example, the label may have
not been printed properly, so that the barcode is able to read it properly.

Code Reading
Codes are printed on products and packages to enable fast and automatic
identification of the contents. The most common types are barcodes and matrix
codes.

Barcode
A barcode is a 1D-code that contains numbers and consists of black and
white vertical line elements. Barcodes are used extensively in packaging and
logistics.
Examples of common barcode types are:
1. EAN-8 and EAN-13
2. Code 39 and Code 128
3. UPC-A and UPC-E
4. Interleaved 2 of 5. Example of Code 39 barcode.
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Design and Manufacturing in Automotive, DMA

Matrix Code
A matrix code is a 2D-array of code elements (squares or dots) that can
contain information of both text and numbers. The size of the matrix depends on
how much information the code contains. Matrix codes are also known as 2D
codes.
An important feature with matrix codes is the redundancy of information,
which means that the code is still fully readable thanks to a correction scheme
although parts of the image are destroyed.
Examples of matrix codes are:
1. DataMatrix (e.g. with correction scheme ECC200)
2. PDF417
3. MaxiCode.
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Design and Manufacturing in Automotive, DMA

References

1. Keyence Catalogue SR200 Series

2. https://www.keyence.com
3. Machine Vision Introduction - Course