Self-calibrating products system and method

Claim 1

An installation for assembly-line manufacture wherein workpieces move in a row along a production path at a generally uniform spacing and comprising: control means for supervising and coordinating the operation of subsequent means of the installation on the workpieces as same move along the production path, feed means for holding a supply of workpieces and for placing them in a predetermined position in the seats of an input rotary feed conveyor, inspecting means defining a portion of the continuous production path for the workpieces for inspecting the workpieces as they pass there along and including: an intake rotary conveyor cooperating with the feed conveyor, an output rotary conveyor and, at least one inspecting carousel between the intake and output conveyors, calibrating means for periodically creating gaps in the production line upstream of the inspecting carousel, inserting a minimum-size gauge into one of the gaps and a maximum-size gauge into another upstream of the inspecting carousel, measuring the sizes of the gauge pieces on the inspecting carousel and, establishing from the measured sizes of the gauge pieces maximum and minimum-size limits; and rejecting means along the production path downstream of the inspecting carousel for removing from the path workpieces whose size lie outside the range of the established size limits, said feed means, calibrating means and rejecting means constituting said subsequent means of the installation, wherein the inspecting carousel and the intake and output conveyor each have a plurality of workpiece-receiving seats equispaced about a center, said calibrating means further comprising: recycling means including a recycling conveyor connected between the intake and output conveyors for taking the gage pieces from the latter and circulating them back to the former, whereby said conveyors and inspecting carousel define a closed recycling circuit having a predetermined number of generally equispaced positions, the number of positions of the recycling circuit and the number of seats of the inspecting carousel having no common whole-number divisor other than one.