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What you might want to consider is building a small fixture specifically for taking these pictures with a built in light source. What generally works well for Pin Stamped or Etched numbers is a low incidance light (sometimes called Dark Field Lighting). What you do is bring the light in at a...

I am not sure if this qualifies as Cheap or easy, but it sounds like a Machine Vision System using a blob tool could help you with your application. These systems are available from $2,000-$10,000 per camera. If that is too much money and you are looking for something to try offline on a very...

Doing the install/uninstall routine that PLC guy suggests works really well for doing the programming on a budget. I did that for a project I worked on a while ago. When you uninstalled the software it didn't erase your work and in fact when you re-installed the software, it remembered the...

Not to throw some extra stuff for you to look at, but if you are looking around for a good scada system, you might want to check out GE Fanuc's CIMPLICITY software. I am not sure if communicates to all the devices you mentioned, but it probably does. The great thing about CIMPLICITY for you...

I use a USB converter from Keyspan. The one thing you have to really look for is that the converter draws power from the USB port. There are some unpowered USB to Serial Convertors that don't work with some PLC's/controllers/whatever because they don't supply their own power for their serial...

It really depends on the PLC that you are working with. RS-485 is an electrical standard that allowed for greater distances between devices and also allows for multi-drop configurations. This is really a legacy solution from the time before Ethernet or the Fieldbus's became common. As far as...

I used to work for a small systems integrator that would routinely face this problem. We would have a system we were building a panel for that used 3 Phase motors, but we didn't have 3 phase in our building. One of the electicians worked out a method using an old 3 phase motor without the...

Siemens PLC's can be a little tricky with transfering data, but as XNuke said, there are a ton of solutions. To answer the question well, You need to know which Siemens PLC you are talking to and what port you want to pull the data out of. They have their own special versions of most...

I think the trick here is to utilize an external controller/processor other than the Host PC. The problem is in the windows environment that it is a multi-tasking environment and it is difficult to Sieze control away from windows to focus on a time critical task (like sending pulses to a...

If you are looking for a cheaper route to your automation and as this is a business venture, make sure you check out E-bay for the components you need. You can get practically any PLC and I/O or controller made for pennies on the dollar. Obviously, you give up some support and probably don't...

If you are looking for a low level introduction to PLC's, I know there is a guy on E-bay that has been selling such a book forever. I have no idea if it is good or bad, but it is Cheap! Good luck!

I know this is a bit disgusting, but I remember hearing in the news several years ago that the japanese had developed a process for turning fecal matter into food material in order to reduce sewage waste. The report was that it was both nutricious and tasty although how they found a taste...

Along this line of thought, I have always wondered why they don't place some type of protective shell over the heat tiles during launch. In order to absorb the heat of re-entry these tiles have to be made of a rather brittle ceramic like material which leads to them loosing several on just...

I know that Automation Direct makes an interface that emulates the National Instruments boards. Bascially these turn their 305 PLC into a analog Devices board for Labview and others. Not super cheap but much lower cost per point than the National Instruments or Analog Devices Solutions...

I am not sure about the higher voltages, but there are several battery backed power supplies that are usually used for computer back up that work well for control applications. The thing that is nice about them is you are actually drawing your power off the batteries during normal operation so...

I would start off with Automation Direct. They sell some very reasonably priced PLC's, Operator interfaces, software, etc. Their products are made by major manufacturers at a fraction of the cost of most. http://www2.automationdirect.com/store/Home/Home Good luck!

I especially like the CTC Motion Controller and programming package (Quickstep). Very easy to program and extremely robust. Compumotor has a nice programming package as well (Motion Planner) with a VB environment built in for setting up a really slick operator interface, but the drives...

The above posts are correct. Cognex is the world leader for Machine Vision and is probably the best place to start. Their link is: http://www.cognex.com I have used DVT as well and they are pretty good at binary images (where the image is almost completely black and white with no shades of...

You could try North Star Imaging (www.4ndtnsi.com). They do great work and offer classes on x-ray inspection. In fact when I went through 3 of the other students were looking at your exact application. Good Luck! John Salls Applied Vision Systems, Inc.

If you are talking about visually inspecting incoming parts for quality and quantity, you might try Cognex. (www.cognex.com). I don't think they have a specific software package for that, but could sell you the tools to make your own or perhaps recommend one of their OEM's that make exactly...