STTR Phase I: Development of an In-Line Cylinder Bore Inspection System

这个小型企业技术转让（STTR）第一阶段项目旨在实现发动机缸体缸孔表面光洁度的自动化检测。该技术在汽车、重型卡车、拖拉机、军用车辆、发电机和其他使用活塞发动机的设备的发动机制造中具有潜在的应用。目前，生产线上的发动机缸体的气缸孔由人目视检查。检查是主观的，只能识别明显损坏的气瓶。该项目将使用散射光以生产线的速度绘制每个发动机缸体的每个气缸的整个区域。数据将被处理，以自动识别和标记有缺陷的气缸使用客观的标准。它将能够确定生产过程何时偏离合规性，以防止生产有缺陷的零件。该项目将包括开发气缸孔探头，解释来自这些探头的信号，制定自动评估数据的标准，以及开发显示数据的最佳方式。该项目的更广泛（商业）影响将是更好地控制气缸孔生产过程，有助于防止生产有缺陷的气缸，并在出现问题时协助进行根本原因分析。它将提高包含块的发动机的质量和一致性，并通过消除无聊和重复的任务，减少废料和减少停机时间来提高生产率。采用这种检查程序的公司将变得更具竞争力。自动化这一检测过程将使汽车公司能够控制成本，并为客户提供始终如一的更高质量的车辆。更好地控制气缸制造过程将为优化制造过程提供机会，以减少排放，减少油耗，提高燃油效率并延长发动机寿命。该技术还可以修改用于需要自动检测表面光洁度的其他应用。

This Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase I project is directed towards automating the inspection of cylinder bore surface finish in engine blocks. The technology has potential application in the manufacture of engines for automobiles, heavy trucks, tractors, military vehicles, generators and other equipment that employs piston engines. At the present time cylinder bores of engine blocks on a production line are inspected visually by humans. The inspection is subjective and can only identify cylinders that are clearly bad. The project will use scattered light to map the entire area of every cylinder of every engine block at the speed of a production line. The data would be processed to automatically identify and flag defective cylinders using objective criteria. It would be able to determine when the production process is drifting out of compliance to prevent production of defective parts. The project will include developing the cylinder bore probes, interpreting the signals from these probes, developing criteria for automated evaluation of the data, and developing optimal ways of displaying the data. The broader (commercial) impacts from this project will be better control of the cylinder bore production process, helping to prevent defective cylinders from being produced and assisting in root cause analysis when problems do arise. It will improve the quality and uniformity of engines containing the blocks and will improve productivity by eliminating tasks that are boring and repetitive, by reducing scrap and by reducing down time. Companies employing this inspection process would become more competitive. Automating this inspection process would enable automobile companies to contain costs and provide customers with consistently higher quality vehicles. Better control of the cylinder manufacturing process would present the opportunity for optimizing the manufacturing process to reduce emissions, reduce oil consumption, improve fuel efficiency and increase engine life. The technology may also be modified for other applications in which automated inspection of surface finish is desired.