The system uses an industrial robot to provide the automated inspection of holes drilled in aluminium or composite test coupons. The robot is equipped with Smart Plugs mounted on the robot wrist which are able to accurately measure and record hole diameters.
The coupon to be processed is manually loaded into the dedicated fixture and the relevant smart plug is attached to the robot wrist. A high resolution camera system then takes an image of the positions of all of the drilled holes and relays the positions back to the robot controller. The robot then drives to each hole position in turn, inserts the probe and triggers a reading which is recorded in an Excel document. Freely selectable parameters on the control panel allow the robot to take further readings at different angles and heights within each hole..