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There ya go being all practical and what not

You mean since I can't even see through the doors, The inside mounted camera would be blind also? Hmmm thats a tough nut to crack. Now you got me thinking about scara mounted camera to move in when needed much like my touch probe does on my lathe..

BigJohnT wrote:
It might be possible to cover the lens except during tool changes.

I am actually curious about how good a camera + vision system would be as an automated tool-length measuring system. It seems stupid on the face of it, but webcams are so very cheap.

I don't know much about web cams but the cameras we use can measure the length of an object accurate enough for a tool offset depending on the lens and lighting of course. I can only assume that the measuring ability is partly in in the software the camera uses and partly in the quality of the lens used. The cameras we use have all the software built in and use a network cable and your browser to set it up. Cameras also depend greatly on good lighting and that is a whole nuther black art so much so that we send the parts to the "expert" and they experiment with lighting of various color and intensity and location until the camera can see the "feature" we want.

In any case we try and talk the customer into anything but a camera as a solution when possible due to the maintenance of keeping the camera up and running.

John

BigJohnT wrote:
And a Playstation controller?
I worked for a company that was an integrator for the Keyence cameras, and did the training course, but we never installed one as far as I recall.

andypugh wrote:
Playstation?

Keyence is high dollar stuff for sure... we can get it but it's always too expensive for the return.

John

Ok guys, you win the cameras on mill/lathes.

But the PnP market is still there.