Baosteel Group Corporation Limited (hereinafter referred to as Baosteel Group) focuses on steel as its main business, forming three major product series: carbon steel, stainless steel and special steel, which are used in automobiles, home appliances, petrochemicals, machinery manufacturing, energy and transportation, metal products, aerospace, nuclear power and electronic instruments and other fields.
Automotive parts are a key product line for Baosteel, and different cutting tools are required for surface treatment during their machining. Therefore, the machining workshop needs to constantly change cutting tools to provide a more precise machining platform, ensuring flawless operation. However, during tool changing, a series of problems can easily arise, such as damaged tools not being replaced or errors in the tool changing process.
Figure 1 On-site photo. Figure 1 description: As shown in the figure, the two-dimensional barcode on the surface of the workpiece is read.
“In the early stages of the project, we chose a barcode tracking solution, but it was immediately rejected due to the humid environment. Later, we considered directly marking the workpiece with QR codes to verify the accuracy of the tools while the robot was changing them, i.e., adding a DPM code system. However, this brought the stringent requirement of not wearing down the tools,” pointed out an engineer from Hangzhou Chuangzhi Automation Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Hangzhou Chuangzhi), the technical service provider for Baosteel Group. “Because of the differences in tool size and thickness, QR codes with inconsistent printing quality cannot adapt to large changes in depth of field, and the reflectivity of different materials cannot produce a QR code with good contrast.”
Figure 2. Schematic diagram of barcode reader installation at the work site. Figure 2 description: Installation method of barcode reader at the work site.
“We learned that Cognex is a global leader in the vision industry, and their barcode readers are very powerful,” said Mr. Liu from the new project introduction department of Baosteel Group. “Hangzhou Chuangzhi conducted a lot of testing and research for this project and finally decided to use Cognex’s powerful barcode readers to help us solve the tricky problem.”
At the scene, Cognex's liquid auto-zoom lens and multiple setup modules played a significant role. Engineers from Hangzhou Chuangzhi created a setup for products of the same type and focal length, solving the testing problem with only 3 setups in just 500ms.
After the debugging was completed, Mr. Wang from Hangzhou Chuangzhi said, "Cognex's product has a very high cost performance. We have always known the Cognex brand. This successful test has made me trust Cognex's solutions even more. We are also very gratified to be able to relieve Baosteel Group's concerns, improve production quality, and reduce costs."
"In the early stages of testing, we verified the quality of various markings on the product surface and the different materials on the surface one by one. Only then did we achieve such good results. The powerful functions of the DataMan barcode reader can well meet the testing requirements," said Manager Cai of Hangzhou Chuangzhi, while demonstrating the success of the equipment and giving high praise to Cognex's product level.
The powerful and efficient image processing technology of the DataMan barcode reader, along with the experienced technical support from Hangzhou Chuangzhi, played a significant role in this project. The DataMan barcode reader's perfect support for multiple communication methods enabled Hangzhou Chuangzhi to fully customize the entire program flow and interface according to the inspection requirements, efficiently completing image processing while accurately recognizing the 2D barcodes on the workpiece surface.
"Using Cognex DataMan barcode readers not only met our testing needs, significantly improving our production speed and product quality, but also helped Baosteel Group improve its production processes and promote overall product quality improvement," emphasized Engineer Liu from Baosteel Group's New Project Introduction Department.
