Project description

The project OptiCrimp is funded by the federal ministry for economic affairs and climate action. The goal is the development of an automated optical inspection (AOI) system for the holistic quality assessment of crimp connections. The project started in March 2022 and is carried out by the institute FAPS and the company Schäfer Werkzeug und Sondermaschinenbau GmbH.

The project OptiCrimp addresses current requirements in wire and terminal processing such as higher quality, traceability, and automation. The development goal is an AOI system which can be flexibly integrated into crimping machines to assess the quality of produced crimp connections inline. The to-be-developed AOI system captures images of crimp connections on-the-fly without compromising machine tact time. The novelty of the project is the implementation of deep learning as the key technology for real-time image data processing. The quality results will be visualized at the machine interface for trouble-shooting by the operator and quality-relevant data are stored for traceability of each crimp connection. The company Schäfer Werkzeug und Sondermaschinenbau GmbH is responsible for the development of the AOI system on a hardware level. The institute will develop and implement deep learning models and algorithms for image data processing.