There are a variety of manufacturing processes that are monitored for quality control purposes. One example is in the wire harness industry in which a plurality of wires are manipulated as part of the harness assembly procedures. For example, crimping machines exert a force on the wires for establishing connections between wire ends and connectors. Force monitors have been used to observe the forces applies during crimping for purposes of attempting to monitor the quality of the resulting connections. Other manufacturing processes have similar characteristics and force monitoring is useful in those contexts.
Typical force monitoring processes obtain force information and observe it over time. One of the difficulties associated with that approach is that it is challenging to ensure that a force compared to time signature occurs at the appropriate processing stage because earlier or later signatures are typically not distinguishable from each other.
Another approach is to monitor force compared to displacement. This approach avoids the drawbacks associated with monitoring force over time but it requires tracking displacement of the machinery involved in the process under observation. Part of the challenge associated with this approach is ensuring that any position sensor is reliably and conveniently situated on the machine under observation. Another shortcoming of many approaches that use position or displacement is that it only provides information at discrete intervals or steps and that limits the amount of available information.
Another challenge associated with known force monitoring techniques is that the changes in the resulting force during a manufacturing process from one iteration to another can be relatively minor yet the resulting products may have significant quality differences. The relatively minor changes in force can be difficult to detect which may lead to a failure to identify defective products or potential issues in a manufacturing process.