Cutting Blade Measurement of an Ultrasonic Cutting Machine Using Multi-Step Detection

Abstract

An algorithm for measurement of the cutting blade of the ultrasonic vibration cutting machine used in an automation machine is proposed in this paper. The proposed algorithm, which is based upon a multi-step detection method, is developed for the accurate measurement of the cutting blade by exactly determining its rotation angle, length, and thickness. Instead of the commonly used Otsu method, we propose a new curvature-based adaptive binarization method, which provides more accurate details about the dimensions of the cutting blade. A region of interest containing the cutting blade from the acquired image is first extracted in the multi-step detection method, which is further processed to remove the noise, which increases the measurement reliability. An important feature of the proposed process is the restoration of the cutting blade’s tip data, which used to be lost during the fine noise-filtering process. The rotation angle and length are measured using the minimum rotated rectangle while the line fitting based upon the least square method is applied to increase the reliability of the thickness measurement. Experimental results validate the superiority of the proposed method over the conventional Otsu method.