Optical Inspection System for Combination Instrument Prototypes

01. December 2011 - GOEPEL electronic introduces TOM Combi-Line, a brand-new optical inspection system for cost-efficient prototype and evaluation test of instrument clusters of any vehicle types. It is a highly compact desktop system with semicircular cover that can be equipped depending on the application with up to three 5 Megapixel cameras.

Images of the instrument clusters are not viewed directly but through an integrated mirror system to ensure the system’s compactness. A special feature is the flexible UUT fixture, enabling the optical inspection of combinational instruments of any type.

One of TOM Combi-Line’s inspection tasks is the check of display contents such as symbols and scripts. The innovative easyOCR function allows the safe inspection of Latin, Cyrillic and Asian scripts without pre-learning process. Furthermore, the TOM system can be utilized for the check of brightness and indicator positions in instrument clusters.

The easyOCR function is integrated in GOEPEL electronic’s well-proven TOM image processing software (TOM = Teachable Optical Measurement). It’s a software tool that features numerous functionalities. In addition to an extensive image processing library, there are in particular convenient opportunities to integrate and configure CCD and CMOS cameras with digital interfaces such as FireWire, GigE or USB. Additionally, the included remote control interface offers the opportunity to integrate optical inspection tasks into superior test programs. Based on the user-friendly operation concept, complex image processing sequences can be generated without prior programming knowledge.