Simulation and Experiments of an Intelligent Steel Ball Counter

In the production process of bearing, counting steel balls is a vital task. Traditional counting methods such as human counting or weighing not only result in large errors but also lead to efficiency too low to satisfy production requirements. With the rapid development of machinery and electronics industry, the production efficiency can be greatly enhanced by machines to replace traditional complex human work. Thus an automatic steel ball counter is urgently needed in industrial production. This paper presents an intelligent steel ball counter using two STC8051 series single-chip microcomputers as the CPU and a 12864 LCD as the display. The mechanical system and control system of the steel ball counter are also introduced in details. The device is able to accurately count steel balls 5-15mm in diameter and experiments showed that the mean accuracy of steel ball counting is 99.23%.