In the automotive industry, the importance of high-frequency signals and their secure transmission is becoming increasingly important.
The signals are used for instance in the fields of telematics and infotainment (e.g. for antennas, GPS, DAB, WiFi) and assistance systems (e.g. cameras) as well as for general mobile applications.
Common standards for connectors are FAKRA or HSD.
A critical characteristic for these high-frequency applications is the so-called wobble circle of signal pins.
It is crucial for reliable signal transmission and automatic assembly & contacting of the plug.
Our longtime customer is well known as a manufacturer of proven and established products in high diversity.
The task for Ziemann & Urban was here to provide a highly accurate, flexible and scalable system for manual 100% inspection of the different product families.
The product families feature various designs (single & double connector, straight & angled version) and custom encodings (housing & colour). At the end of each assembly line, a Ziemann & Urban inspection system ensures 100% quality.
System advantages: Flexibility, low cost for upgrading to new products, measuring in time of the production line and no demands on machine safety.
The systems are built on a solid base with component-specific and rapidly changeable fittings and are integrated by the customer into the assembly lines.
Measured parameters are Pitch (contact spacing), pin positions, pin length, wobble circle of the pin tips.
Additionaly, features such as presence, housing color coding and complete assembly are insepcted.
OK parts get marked with a pneumatic unit.
As only labeled OK components are allowed to be packed, the presence of the marking is checked with an additional camera.
The operator starts the test with an electric foot pedal. The result is visualized on a control box with signal lamps and on the computer screen in plain text.
In case of a NOK result the correct disposal of the bad part into a sensor monitored box is controlled by the system. With the integrated multi-level user management the customer can be decided whether repeated measurements are possible and if certain types of errors (e.g. lack of marking) further testing will be blocked and the intervention of an authorized person in the form of password input or key switch is needed.
Due to the integrated multi-language support of the ZU-Vision software and a multi language operation system (Windows7) the system can be used on all production sites of the customer.
For the required precision telecentric lenses and lighting and high-resolution industrial cameras in different resolutions and fields of view are used. For a clean and reproducible exposure of the pin tips coaxial illumination is combined with adjustable diffuse ring lights (dimmable and / or strobe function).
This is necessary because the pin tips can be manufactured with different technologies (turned or punched), depending on connector type. For the adjustment of working distances, the cameras can be equipped with adjustable reproducible fine adjustment slides.
The camera and lighting settings are stored in the data record for each part type. An enclosure made of aluminum system profiles with integrated ambient light shielding ensures reproducible measuring results even under fluctuating ambient lighting conditions.
To set up the optical testing and to verificate the measurement capability special scaling parts are used. The scaling data is stored globally per system, so that an installation of new types and a periodical Measurement System Analysis (MSA) is easy to accomplish.
The basic structure of the system is easily adaptable to different requirements and was realized by Ziemann & Urban for many different customers and products.
Possible Variations are:
- part insertion per push loading drawer with automatic start
- System design as a complete test bench / table workstation with integrated PC and monitor
- Combination with automatic removal handling and packaging (e.g blister, tray, small load carriers)
