Non Contact/Gauging Measurement of Automotive Glass

Leigh Sargent, Dynamic Measurement Systems International

Conventional gauging of automotive glass has been in its present form for over five decades. The gauge has been in an evolutionary process over this time period with improvements in material, dimensional accuracy and the addition of limited sensors and electronics for data acquisition. Methods of automating through robotic glass placement and positioning have improved the measurement process, but only incrementally. The hard gauge as we know it still has many legacies and their elimination or major reduction would be desirable.

Automotive glass however has been an elusive product to measure in non-contact form due to transparency, reflectivity and change in surface color and texture imposed by inks. Glass edges that are ground or cut present formidable challenges for both reasons expressed above. It is this difficulty that the DMS technology has overcome, providing accurate and repeatable non contact measurement. The stagnation of major progress in the area of automotive glass measurement has now been broken with a revolutionary technology focused solely on the problems at hand.

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