Metal Industry Machine vision for unbeatable quality

Long story short

A bicycle wheel is only as strong as its weakest spoke: one spoke with an invisible flaw shifts the load onto the rest of the wheel, leading to wear or even failure. For the cyclist, this usually stays invisible until something goes wrong. To the human eye, the pace of such a production line is too fast: a small scratch or dent is easy to miss. SAPIM, a manufacturer of bicycle spokes from the metal industry, produces these spokes in huge volumes and at high speed, and has to hold every single spoke to the same quality standard, without exception.

What does this mean for you?

Does every single piece need to be perfect at your business too, while the line runs too fast for a visual check? CTRL engineering develops inspection systems that automatically assess every piece at line speed, with analytics that immediately show where and how often things go wrong.

The challenge

At a production speed of more than 180 pieces per minute, an operator has no time to inspect every spoke individually. A scratch, a dent or another defect is also easy to miss on the shiny metal surface, especially at that pace. Yet not a single faulty spoke can end up in the wrong batch.

Our approach

CTRL engineering built a fully integrated inspection system for SAPIM that automatically examines and assesses every spoke the moment it comes off the line, without ever slowing down the production speed. A rejected spoke is automatically removed from the line, without an operator needing to intervene, and every rejection is logged immediately for further analysis.

“We've developed a machine vision system that ensures each metal part meets the highest quality standards, setting new benchmarks in the industry.”

- Aaron Wittouck, Development Engineer at CTRL engineering

The result

A defect rate of less than 0.01%, without giving up any production speed. The system also provides detailed analytics on the type and frequency of defects: a basis for improving the production process itself, not just for sorting out faulty parts afterwards.