Measuring the bends and straight sections of a bent tube can be tricky and time-consuming, especially if the tube has a large number of bends in several directions. Photogrammetry, also known as optical measurement, uses a booth equipped with several digital cameras to make a digital image of the part, allowing fast, easy measurements.

TubeInspect HD

Tubes and wires shorter than 500mm are hidden in nearly all common objects. Consequently, the quality control of these parts concerns almost all industrial sectors including the automotive, electronic, household appliance, construction, and furniture industry as well as medical engineering. For example, precise dental drills are made from bent wires. Equally, this concerns fuel injector rails in automotive engineering. However, so far, it has hardly been possible to inspect the geometries of these very small, thin tubes and wires. The typically applied metrology is not able to acquire the elements of each individual small part, and even a common gauge check often proves to be unfeasible. The solution is AICON’s TubeInspect HD. The newly-developed TubeInspect HD is especially designed to suit the requirements arising in the production of bent tube and wire parts shorter than 500mm. It is based on the successful TubeInspect software that is also applied in AICON’s optical tube measuring systems TubeInspect and TubeInspect S. TubeInspect HD three-dimensionally inspects short, thin tubes and wires with diameters of 1mm up to 10mm. It checks various geometric features such as bends, length of the part, and end-to-end distance. The measuring field comprises a volume of 450mm x 400mm x 200mm. TubeInspect HD is able to measure the geometries with a unique accuracy due to several decisive factors: It disposes of eight digital cameras positioned close to the work piece, each having a resolution of 2 megapixels. Moreover, it uses a glass reference that is stable both with respect to shape and temperature. For the determination of the sheath tolerance, the measuring accuracy accounts for +0.025mm. The measuring results are available within seconds and are displayed on the provided notebook computer. They are presented in a color-coded way following a gauge check. Thus the operator can quickly make a decision about the quality of the parts. TubeInspect HD requires only little space. The measuring cell can easily be placed on a table and thus be integrated into an existing production environment with minimal effort.

Tube Inspect

TubeInspect is specially designed for the measurement of formed tubes and wires – both in Reverse Engineering and in serial production. Beyond that, the system is able to calculate setup and correctional data for your bending machines within just a few seconds.

TubeInspect HS

Nowadays, the production of tubes is shaped by narrowing tolerances. As a consequence, very precise inspection equipment with high measuring repeatability is required for quality assurance in order to control the production in a reliable way. AICON reacts to this demand and launches the new camera-based 3D tube measuring system TubeInspect HS. At first glance, the new measuring system seamlessly fits into AICON’s TubeInspect product line. Basic elements of the system have been redesigned though. For measuring the tubes, TubeInspect HS uses ten digital cameras with higher resolutions. Moreover a spatial reference point field made from glass, being especially stable with respect to shape and temperature, is located in the measuring cell. Thus the measuring system can resort to reference points in different spatial planes, which leads to a more precise measurement of the tube geometries. Also in terms of the software, basic changes have been implemented. TubeInspect HS makes use of AICON’s new software version 4.5 that contributes to a higher measuring accuracy thanks to an improved algorithm. Dr.-Ing. Werner Boesemann, AICON’s president, explains the added value of the new TubeInspect system: "Let’s take a closer look at an injection pipe. This pipe must fit exactly into the available installation space – and this space becomes more and more confined. Furthermore, the connectors of the tubes have to be very accurate because it is not possible to compensate any deviation from the target geometry during assembly in case of such an inflexible and short pipe. This is the reason why the tolerances for injection pipes are getting smaller. With TubeInspect HS it is possible to inspect the geometric features of these pipes with the required precision and in a reliable way. This is impossible with traditional measuring methods such as coordinate measuring machines." TubeInspect HS not only reaches a high precision of up to 50µm (1 sigma). In comparison to conventional tube measuring technology, it additionally scores with an unprecedented measuring repeatability. The measuring results can be documented in a clear way with the help of graphical reports. In general, TubeInspect allows for the measurement of any tube geometry independent from surface color or texture. TubeInspect HS measures tubes with diameters ranging from 2mm to 100mm. The measuring range of the system is 1,080mm x 980mm x 500mm.