Hufschmied Zerspanungssysteme uses fully automated quality control from VisCheck
Bobingen/Winterlingen, 08 January 2025 – The Hufschmied Zerspanungssysteme GmbH together with VisCheck GmbH, an expert in intelligent image processing, introduced a state-of-the-art solution for automated quality control in the production of tool blades. Thanks to the AI-based solution “OPDRA Quality”, Hufschmied significantly reduce the effort required for the quality control of its tool blades. The entire measurement of the tools and their optical inspection are now carried out fully automatically using a collaborative robot. This enables the process to run around the clock. All measurement results are also stored in a digital twin. Each tool blade is provided with a data matrix code that enables the test results to be clearly assigned to the respective blade.
In addition to milling tools, Hufschmied in its plant in Winterlingen in the Swabian Alb also produces so-called cold-cut blades, which are needed in the automotive industry for airbag trimming. These extremely sensitive 20 × 5 mm blades undergo an optical inspection: an image processing system with machine learning software examines the blade tip for potential damage in a grid of just 50 × 50 µm. The overall geometry is then recorded with all lengths and angles. In order to fully automate quality assurance, a collaborative robot removes the blades from a rack with more than 150 slots and carries out the optical measurements overnight. The images and measured values generated in the inspection process are then stored in the cloud.
“For high-precision products such as the tools from Hufschmied the effort required for quality assurance sometimes exceeds that required for production. With our intelligent, adaptive image processing systems, we increase the efficiency of the inspection processes and make them fully automatable,” says Lutz Schaufuss, member of the management board of VisCheck GmbH.