Patent ID: 6052627
Filing Date: 2000-04-18
Classification: B21D,B23Q,Y10S

Abstract:
A workpiece identifying apparatus comprising:a pallet for carrying flat rough workpieces provided at least at a pair of diagonally disposed corners thereof with respective absolute reference points for determining the XY dimensions of the rough workpieces;a flat image pickup means arranged vis-a-vis the surface plane of said workpieces for obtaining a flat image of the workpieces with said pair of absolute reference points and the corners of the workpieces located in proximity to said respective absolute reference points;an absolute reference point determining means for extracting said pair of absolute reference points from said flat image obtained by the flat image pickup means and determining the locations of the absolute reference points for measuring the XY dimensions of the workpieces;a relative reference point determining means for extracting the relative reference points arranged on the workpieces including the corners of the workpieces from said flat image obtained by the flat image pickup means and determining the locations of the relative reference points for measuring the XY dimensions of the workpieces;a relative difference computing means for computing the differential between each of the absolute reference points locationally determined by said absolute reference point determining means and the corresponding one of the relative reference points locationally determined by said relative reference point determining means by way of the X-component and the Y-component of the differential; andan XY dimensions computing means for computing the XY dimensions of the workpieces from the result of computation produced by said relative difference computing means and the known XY dimensions of a given square having a pair of diagonally disposed corners located on said pair of absolute reference points of said pallet.