STTR Phase I: Development of an In-Line Cylinder Bore Inspection System

This Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase I project is directed towards automating the inspection of cylinder bore surface finish in engine blocks. The technology has potential application in the manufacture of engines for automobiles, heavy trucks, tractors, military vehicles, generators and other equipment that employs piston engines. At the present time cylinder bores of engine blocks on a production line are inspected visually by humans. The inspection is subjective and can only identify cylinders that are clearly bad. The project will use scattered light to map the entire area of every cylinder of every engine block at the speed of a production line. The data would be processed to automatically identify and flag defective cylinders using objective criteria. It would be able to determine when the production process is drifting out of compliance to prevent production of defective parts. The project will include developing the cylinder bore probes, interpreting the signals from these probes, developing criteria for automated evaluation of the data, and developing optimal ways of displaying the data. The broader (commercial) impacts from this project will be better control of the cylinder bore production process, helping to prevent defective cylinders from being produced and assisting in root cause analysis when problems do arise. It will improve the quality and uniformity of engines containing the blocks and will improve productivity by eliminating tasks that are boring and repetitive, by reducing scrap and by reducing down time. Companies employing this inspection process would become more competitive. Automating this inspection process would enable automobile companies to contain costs and provide customers with consistently higher quality vehicles. Better control of the cylinder manufacturing process would present the opportunity for optimizing the manufacturing process to reduce emissions, reduce oil consumption, improve fuel efficiency and increase engine life. The technology may also be modified for other applications in which automated inspection of surface finish is desired.