This is a research conducted by Suneth Sasanka Attygalla, an undergraduate of B.Sc(Honors) degree in Applied Sciences in the field of Applied and Theoretical Physics. This was completed under the supervision of Dr. W. K. I. L. Wanniarachchi in the Department of Physics. A fully automated machine was developed to track the production line and it has the ability to capture the resolution of a ceramic tile. It is very important factor for ceramic tile export market. The developed machine is able to capture the resolution or accuracy of dimension to 0.01 mm which was at 0.1 mm manual process. The measurement time required in the process was 20 seconds (per one tile) in manual method and it is improved to 2.5 seconds (per one tile) with this electronic eye system. The developed code was tested in Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-6200U CPU @ 2.30GHz, x64-besed processor and 4GB of RAM.
As stated above, existing procedure requires manual measurement and recording. Additionally, it is significant to note that the developed mechanism measures any size of cut tiles according to the user given inputs. Earlier labor requirement is 3 employees in the measurement process which can be reduced to one employee with this electronic eye system. Furthermore, the employment requirement can be reduced to zero if the electronic eye machine can be directly connected to the production conveyer line and fully automated. Another advantage of this measurement equipment is that it can measure a tile of any size. Number of tiles that can be measured per one day (24 hours) increased from 4400 to 14400. The equipment is developed to give a warning alarm if the detected tile dimensions are not in the given range.So this invention would be one of the best inventions done by a Applied Science undergraduate of University of Sri Jayewardenepura.
