Journal of Materials Processing Technology 210 (2010) 267271

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Journal of Materials Processing Technology

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jmatprotec

An improved image acquiring method for machine vision measurement of hot formed parts
Zhenyuan Jia, Bangguo Wang, Wei Liu , Yuwen Sun
Key Laboratory for Precision and Non-traditional Machining Technology of the Ministry of Education, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116024, Peoples Republic of China

a r t i c l e

i n f o

a b s t r a c t
Non-contact dimensional measurements of forgings are desirable to permit real-time process control. Machine vision technology has been widely employed as a high-speed, non-contact method in dimensional measurement. However, the extracted features of high-temperature forgings are not suitable for application because of self-emitted radiation. This paper primarily introduces a spectrum selective method for improving the image quality of hot parts. By ltering certain wavelength range light and projecting light to hot parts surface, the images of the hot parts can be obtained without interference from self-emitted radiation. Experiments were also conducted to indicate that the images of hot parts were greatly improved and the feature points could be extracted and matched using the proposed method. 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Article history: Received 7 April 2009 Received in revised form 30 August 2009 Accepted 9 September 2009

Classication codes: 10.006 Keywords: High-temperature forging Machine vision Dimensional measurement

1. Introduction Dimensional measurements are desirable in a number of hot-working processes, such as hot forging processes. Accurate dimensional measurement can signicantly improve productivity and quality, and reduce scrap and waste during hot forming processes. Traditionally, contact measurement equipments such as calipers are often used to measure hot forgings. However, directly exposure to the radiation of hot forgings may cause physical injuries to workers. Limited work has been done on automating contact-based measurements of forgings. Nye et al. (2001) suggested a measurement system. It took advantage of the fact that the forging manipulators were designed to comply with workpiece movements in the forming process. Thus, it was possible to instrument the manipulator to measure the elongation data of workpiece. The system was shown useful for determining some workpiece properties during forging but was not able to estimate overall dimensions of the forgings. Another contact-based measurement system (Siemer et al., 1986) consisting of a spring-load cable attached to the end of forging was described. The cable position was measured when the forging moves back and forth through press. Although the system was useful for acquiring data in laboratory experiments, it is difcult to be used in factory due

Corresponding author. E-mail address: lw2007@dlut.edu.cn (W. Liu). 0924-0136/$ see front matter 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jmatprotec.2009.09.009

to effect of the cable attached to the forging on other process equipment. Vision systems have already been employed for dimensional measurement in many industries. However, the images of hot objects were generally not suitable for machine vision applications because the high-temperature forgings radiate considerable amounts of infrared and visible light that typical CCD cameras are sensitive to. Many approaches for acquiring images of hot parts have been studied. Dworkin and Nye (2006) developed a method that enabled the use of CCD cameras to get images of hot parts. As lenses of CCD focus differently according to different light wavelength, the infrared light will be unfocused when viewing a hot object with a lens focused for visible light. To prevent the CCD from imaging with visible light, a photographic lter was used to block all light below 790 nm at the end of the lens. Thus, the images could be obtained by taking advantage of the luminosity of the hot parts and the extraneous image data were eliminated by simple image process. Another method of acquiring images of weld pools was proposed (Bicknell et al., 1994), which got a clear image of weld pool by optically ltering out the spectral components. However, the images acquired using the two methods mentioned above were unable to obtain detailed and accurate information about the surface features of hot objects. A method of acquiring images of heavy forgings was described (Nie et al., 2005), which could be used to take the images of heavy forgings from 20 m away. According to this method, a mathematical model was proposed (Nie et al., 2006) to calculate the cross-section dimensions of heavy axial forgings. A 3D measuring system using colour CCD, structured light and dig-

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ital optical lter technology was described (Zhao et al., 2006) for non-contact measurement of forgings. Colour images are stored using 24 bits per pixel with eight bits representing the intensity of each red, green and blue light component. By ltering the red light component, the dimension of hot parts only below 850 C could be measured. Moreover, laser prole measurement system has also been developed to obtain geometrical dimensions of forgings (Rech et al., 2006). In this paper, the radiation characteristics of hot parts are analyzed and an improved image acquiring method for hot parts is explained. In addition, experiments are carried out to evaluate the performance of the proposed method. 2. Radiation characteristics of hot parts Radiation characteristics of high-temperature objects have great effect on the image quality taken with a CCD camera. In order to make the images of hot parts suitable for machine vision applications, the self-emitted radiation should be removed from the collected light. The radiation characteristics of hot part are similar to the black body. A black body is a theoretical object and its radiation function is described as (Ge and Na, 1989): Wb, = 2 c2 h
5 (ech/ T k

Fig. 2. The principle of spectrum selective method. The left horizontal axis is the response ration of CCD. The right horizontal axis is the power radiation of black body. The vertical axis is wavelength.

1)

(1)

ant energy of forging is emitted as infrared light. In the visible light region, the radiant intensity of hot part decreases with the decrease of wavelength. 3. Spectrum selective method Based on the analysis of the radiation characteristics of black body, a method which can eliminate the effect of self-emitted radiation of hot part is proposed. External light source and short-pass lters are used in acquiring images of forgings. 3.1. Principle of spectrum selective method The principle of spectrum selective method is shown in Fig. 2. There are several different kinds of curves in this gure, which are the black body radiation curve, the radiation curve of xenon lamp and the sensitivity curve of CCD respectively. The characteristics of the black body radiation curves are analyzed in Section 2. The xenon lamps emit a continuous spectrum of light, ranging from ultraviolet through visible to infrared. The sensitivity curve of the CCD camera indicates that it is sensitive to visible light, ultraviolet and infrared. In order to lter self-emitted radiation of hot parts the infrared and long wavelength visible light should be ltered by placing short-pass lter in front of CCD camera. A xenon lamp is used to project light toward the high-temperature objects at the same time because it can emit the desired illumination wavelength by CCD sensor. The details of the image acquisition process are described as follows: external light source projects light toward the hightemperature objects. The applied light strikes the hot objects and is reected toward CCD cameras along with the self-emitted radiation. One component of the reected light is selectively detected by the CCD cameras. By distinguishing the reected illumination light from self-emitted radiation, CCD cameras can acquire images of the hot objects. 3.2. Selection of wavelength range In order to lter the emissive power of hot parts and acquire images of them, the wavelength range is selected according to the following two equations: (
u, T ) ud )

where is the wavelength; T is the temperature of object; h is the Plancks constant; k is the Boltzmann constant; and c is the speed of light. According to the radiation function, the self-emitted radiation spectrum of black body can be obtained. The black body radiation curves at various temperatures are shown in Fig. 1. At every temperature the black body emits a standard amount of energy, which is represented by the area under the curve. Several characteristics can be found according to the black body radiation curves. (1) The black body radiates energy at every wavelength; (2) the black body emits at a peak wavelength, at which most of the radiant energy is emitted; (3) the peak wavelength emitted by the black body decreases with the increase of temperature; (4) the total energy emitted increases with the increase of temperature, which is due to the increase of the total area under the curve. The spectrum radiation intensity emitted by real surface is always less than that emitted by a black body at the same temperature and wavelength. Usually 45# steel is forged with temperature no more than 1200 C (1473 K). Because the peak wavelength of black body is in the infrared region at 1200 C, most of the radi-

<

(2) (3)

Fig. 1. Black body radiation curves at various temperatures.

>

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two short-pass lters (BD, 450SP), Xenon lamp (BLD, BLD500) and a personal computer. 4.1. Image acquisition To examine the proposed method, a test is performed in the laboratory. A 45# steel bar with the diameter of 45 mm is heated by a high frequency induction heating machine (RJ, GPH-16). Image in Fig. 4(a) shows image of the heated steel bar at 1200 C taken without ltering self-emitted radiation. It can be seen that the taken image is overexposed because of its luminousness. Fig. 4(b) shows the image of the heated steel bar at 1200 C taken after placing short-pass lter in front of CCD camera and using external illumination. It is observed that the detail of the steel bar is clear at 1200 C and the image quality of hot part is signicantly improved compared with the previous image without ltering self-emitted radiation. The proposed method is then used to acquire image of hot forgings. Fig. 5(b) illustrates image of the forging taken using the proposed method. It can be seen that almost all the detail of the forging surface can be observed compared with the image in Fig. 5(a) taken using the visible light. 4.2. Image comparison The histograms of pixel intensity of hot forgings generated from Fig. 5(a) and (b) are shown in Figs. 6 and 7. As shown in Fig. 6, the components of the histogram cover a broad range of the gray scale. The distribution of pixels is far from uniform with a few vertical lines which are much higher than the others. These higher vertical lines are concentrated near the highest side of the gray scale. It is found in Fig. 7 the components of the histogram are narrow and biased toward the low side of the gray scale. Therefore, the histogram of pixel intensity of the hightemperature object is dramatically changed after the self-emitted

Fig. 3. The schematic diagram of image acquisition system.

where u is the longest acceptable wavelength; ud is the selected wavelength range; T is the temperature of hot parts; is the radiation intensity which can be detected by CCD camera; ( u , T) is the radiation intensity of hot parts at wavelength and temperature T; ( ud ) is the reected external light intensity within ud ; and is the light intensity which is suitable for application. The wavelength range ( ud ) can be determined as follows: (1) The highest forgings temperature T (for example: T = 1200 C). (2) The longest acceptable wavelength u which is decided by experiments. The emission power of forgings with the wavelength below 450 nm is difcult to be detected by CCD cameras. Therefore, the u is at wavelength of 450 nm. (3) The lowest wavelength range according to the sensitivity spectrum of CCD camera. In addition, the intensity of the light in wavelength ud from illumination source must have sufcient signal strength which could be presented at CCD. 4. Experimental results The schematic diagram of stereo vision system is shown in Fig. 3, consisting of two monochrome CCD cameras (REDLAKE, ES4020),

Fig. 4. Steel bar at 1200 C. (a) Typical hot part image; (b) image of hot part taken using the spectrum selective method.

Fig. 5. One-ton forging. (a) Typical forging image; (b) image of the forging taken using the spectrum selective method.

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Fig. 6. The intensity histogram for the workpiece in Fig. 5(a).

Fig. 11. 3D plot in Euclidean space.

radiation is being ltered. The histogram, as shown in Fig. 7, is similar to the intensity histogram of forging at room temperature. 4.3. 3D reconstruction In another experiment, the surface of a hot part is reconstructed. Fig. 8 shows the stereo images of the hot part at 1200 C. Fig. 9 displays the feature points of hot part which are extracted by Harris corner detector (Harris and Stephens, 1988). In order to match the extracted feature points a classical correlation technique is applied. The algorithm consists of two steps: (1)

Fig. 7. The intensity histogram for the workpiece in Fig. 5(b).

Fig. 8. Stereo images of the hot part at 1200 C.

Fig. 9. Extracted feature points of the hot part.

Fig. 10. Matching results of the hot part.

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establish initial correspondences by using a classical correlation technique and (2) establish correspondences by using relaxation technique and epipolar geometry. Matching results of the hot part is shown in Fig. 10. When the matching point pairs are found and the cameras are calibrated, the 3D coordinates of the matched corresponding points can be calculated. The shape of the 3D data plotted in 3D space is shown in Fig. 11. 5. Conclusions In this work, an improved image acquiring method for dimensional measurements of hot forgings is demonstrated. By ltering infrared and long wavelength visible light with short-pass lters and projecting light to the part surface with xenon temp, the image of hot part is obtained without interference from self-emitted radiation. The wavelength range of short-pass lters is selected according to the highest temperature of hot part. Experimental results shown in this paper indicated that the feature points could be extracted from the image of hot parts and matched based on the proposed method. Further study is suggested to exam the longest acceptable wavelength ( u ) and the light intensity ( ) which is suitable for application at highest temperature (T) of forging.

Acknowledgement This paper is supported by the National Basic Research Program of China 973 Project under Grant No. 2006CB705406. References
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