| The purpose of the project was to develop a high speed, high accuracy measuring device to aid the engineering technology department at Western Carolina University. When something requires measurement with a high degree of accuracy a coordinate measuring machine is used. This process can be very time consuming especially when multiple iterations are required. A machine vision system is capable of making the same type of measurements in a matter of seconds rather than minutes.;This study covers the development and testing of a machine vision system. Several tests were conducted to help develop and improve the system through changes to the test fixture, lighting, programming, and test object. The results of these tests are only valid for the specific set-up and equipment used, and cannot be transferred to any other system. Even slight changes to the equipment during testing showed significant changes in the data being gathered. This contributed to the final conclusion that the measurements gathered by the machine vision system are not comparable to those of the coordinate measuring machine at any level of accuracy. Improvements to the machine vision system setup must be made to improve accuracy. |
