Inspection of parts for dimensional compliance is a common task in prototyping, manufacture, and quality control. In prototyping and quality assurance courses, students gain an appreciation for the importance, intricacies, and often time-consuming nature of parts inspection that can lower productivity. Here we report student project for designing, fabricating, and testing a non-contact capacitive probe station that can check (pitch and surface figures) threaded parts with multiple thread sizes, with a cycle time of 5 seconds. The performance, cost, and capabilities will be compared to machine vision inspection of parts using a CCD camera and image analysis software. This desktop modular system can be retrofit to CNC machines for in-line, real-time inspection, and includes network data communication. This effort was an 8-month Senior Design capstone project for Engineering Technology students.
Michael Mauk is Assistant Professor in Drexel University's Engineering Technology program.
Dr. Richard Chiou is Associate Professor within the Engineering Technology Department at Drexel University, Philadelphia, USA. He received his Ph.D. degree in the G.W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. His educational background is in manufacturing with an emphasis on mechatronics. In addition to his many years of industrial experience, he has taught many different engineering and technology courses at undergraduate and graduate levels. His tremendous research experience in manufacturing includes environmentally conscious manufacturing, Internet based robotics, and Web based quality. In the past years, he has been involved in sustainable manufacturing for maximizing energy and material recovery while minimizing environmental impact.
Irina Ciobanescu Husanu, Ph. D. is Assistant Clinical Professor with Drexel University, Engineering Technology program. Her area of expertise is in thermo-fluid sciences with applications in micro-combustion, fuel cells, green fuels and plasma assisted combustion. She has prior industrial experience in aerospace engineering that encompasses both theoretical analysis and experimental investigations such as designing and testing of propulsion systems including design and development of pilot testing facility, mechanical instrumentation, and industrial applications of aircraft engines. Also, in the past 10 years she gained experience in teaching ME and ET courses in both quality control and quality assurance areas as well as in thermal-fluid, energy conversion and mechanical areas from various levels of instruction and addressed to a broad spectrum of students, from freshmen to seniors, from high school graduates to adult learners. She also has extended experience in curriculum development. Dr Husanu developed laboratory activities for Measurement and Instrumentation course as well as for quality control undergraduate and graduate courses in ET Masters program. Also, she introduced the first experiential activity for Applied Mechanics courses. She is coordinator and advisor for capstone projects for Engineering Technology.
David English received and Associate in Electrical Technology Degree from New England Institute of Technology, presently David is about to complete his Electrical Engineering in Technology Degree from Drexel University. David has been employed in the power generation field for the past 10 years. The facility where David is presently employed is a natural gas combined cycle generation station which can generate up to 740MW that is distributed to the Southern New Jersey electric grid.
Michael Hazm is a Manufacturing Systems Engineer at Pennsylvania Machine work , responsible for developing and implementing lean automation technologies to improve the productivity of the company operation. Pennsylvania Machine work manufacture high pressure pipe fittings for nuclear power generation, petrochemical, ship building, along with countless other critical industrial applications. Michael Hazm received an Associate degree in Manufacturing Mechanic from ISTA Morocco ,and an Associate in Robotic System from DCCC , and Mechanical Engineering Degree from Drexel University. Michael is a member of: American society of Mechanical Engineering and Society of Manufacturing Engineers.
Are you a researcher? Would you like to cite this paper? Visit the ASEE document repository at peer.asee.org for more tools and easy citations.