Special camera makes weld inspection of pressure vessels more efficient and reliable
Daikin Device Czech Republic is one of the most prestigious manufacturers of heat pumps and air conditioning units. It prides itself on the high quality of its products, which it maintains thanks to careful control of each product. We were approached with a requirement to upgrade a camera that captures the inside of pressure vessels and is used to detect potential defects at the weld point.
Imperfect image and complicated scanning hampered output control
Manufacturers of all welded structures are obliged to meet the requirements for product safety and reliability. For pressure vessels manufactured by Daikin Device Czech Republic, an indirect visual inspection of the internal welds must be carried out, among other things, in order to comply with all necessary standards.
Initially, the visual inspection of the welds was carried out by the company’s employees using mirrors or a simple camera on a pole, which had only a limited field of view and insufficient image quality. In order to take a complete picture of the weld along its entire length, the worker had to manually rotate the pressure vessel while ensuring that the camera was always pointing in the right place. The image was then displayed on a connected computer.
Our job was to get the entire scanning facilityto professionalize and produce more piecesso that multiple pressure vessels can be checked at once. In addition, we wanted to solve simplification of traceability – keeping a record of the inspection so that it is easy to trace which defect occurred, on which product and who was responsible for the inspection. This would speed up the whole inspection process.
Optimization of weld scanning started the overall improvement of the inspection process
Our first focus was on securing a suitable camera module. We already have experience with this kind of thing thanks to the development of customized electronics for other companies, but even so it was not entirely easy, because we needed to find the right type that would have a large enough field of view.
In the course of the cooperation, the client decided that he would like to place the control equipment on a new production line, but where he wanted to ensure automated rotation of the pressure vessel.
We found this solution quite complicated and expensive. Instead, we came up with a mechanism that would rotate the camera around. The rotation is provided by a stepper motor and the camera gradually captures the entire space. The image processing is done by NVIDIA Jetson using the OpenCV library.
The inspection itself is still carried out by a Daikin Device employee, but thanks to an advanced image capture and processing system, his work is faster and the results more accurate.
Summary
Thanks to an advanced camera system with an extended field of view, Daikin Device Czech Republic can now perform visual inspection of pressure vessel welds faster, more accurately and more reliably. This innovative solution has not only improved image quality, but has also made it easier to track inspections and prepare for the future integration of artificial intelligence.
