Development of a Robust and Accurate Positioning System in Micromachining Based on CAMERA and LCD Screen

© 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. In this proceeding, a positioning system based on a camera-screen control in micromachining has been developed. With this control system, the position of the cutting tool with respect to the workpiece coordinate system during a machining operation, has been controlled by an artificial vision algorithm. The positioning system consists of setting a path of target positions, each defined in the form of lighted LEDs on a smartphone, in order to capture them by a camera. As a result, each LED has been magnified and turned into a set of pixels due to the higher resolution of the camera. Afterwards, the developed artificial vision algorithm has used a filtering method to detect the pixels with weighted intensity values over a given threshold. The quality of the micro-machining positioner has been proved by means of two calibration tests: Back-step Test without the use of artificial vision, and an Artificial Vision Test using the camera-screen control system. The results demonstrate that the use of a screen-camera closed loop control system provides appropriate accuracy in positioning the workpiece in a micro-machine tool.