Patent ID: 8237935

Claim:
A system for automatically inspecting parts, the system comprising: a support for supporting a part to be inspected along a measurement axis; a head apparatus including a plurality of radiation plane generators for directing an array of planes of radiation at the part so that the part occludes each of the planes of radiation to create a corresponding array of unobstructed planar portions of the planes of radiation wherein each of the unobstructed planar portions contains an amount of radiation which is representative of a respective geometric dimension of the part, the head apparatus further including a plurality of radiation plane receivers, each of the receivers measuring the amount of radiation present in an adjacent pair of unobstructed planar portions created from the same plane of radiation to obtain at least one measurement signal; a stage subsystem including a stage movable along a stage axis substantially parallel to the measurement axis and coupled to the head apparatus to move therewith for translating the head apparatus relative to the part along the stage axis so that the planes of radiation scan the part supported by the support substantially perpendicular to the stage and measurement axes wherein the subsystem further includes a linear sensor for sensing linear position of the stage along the stage axis and sensor electronics for providing a corresponding measurement trigger signal at each of a plurality of known spatial intervals of stage movement along the stage axis; and electronics for processing each trigger signal from the sensor electronics to sample the at least one measurement signal of each of the receivers at each of the plurality of spatial intervals and for processing each of the sampled measurement signals to obtain data.