Patent Document ID: 4097750
Application ID: 05779158
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. The method of determining the orientation of an industrial part wherein the part is characterized by a pattern of dominant parallel lines comprising the steps of optically forming an image of the said part and smearing the image by at least one cylindrical lens having a cylinder axes to thereby smear the image as a function of the angle between the said parallel lines and the cylinder axis, the smeared image lines being sharpest when the direction of smearing is parallel to the said parallel lines and the smeared image lines are less sharp when the direction of smear differs from the direction of the parallel lines, angularly scanning the part by rotating the image of the part relative to the cylindrical lens so that the smeared line image sharpness varies according to the angle of image rotation, photoelectrically detecting the smeared line image to acquire data on image sharpness, and processing the acquired data to establish the angle of image rotation which results in the sharpest image and relating that angle to the angular orientation of said pattern of parallel lines.