Keyence IV-Navigator Help

My company has several of the IV-Navigator vision cameras that we use for nut detection on an area that is very similar on the Gray scale. We have a lot of trouble with accuracy and repeat-ability to find good and bad parts with these cameras. I really feel like they aren't adequate for our application. But I wanted some other opinions before I go through validating a different system to use as our standard. Does anyone have any thoughts on the best way to detect this reliably with the IV-Navigator cameras?

Is the lighting in the detection area good?

If the 'nut' to be detected is the same 'color' as the background . . .
I would try changing the background to something that is
much easier to differentiate from the 'nut'.

Poet.

Our lighting is not great. But a lot of our parts don't have a way to change the back lighting. As it's part on part. I have tried adding different lighting from the side. But my biggest issue is that the nut is never in the same position. Meaning, it is auto-fed onto the part and I can't control how the projections sit. It gets even harder since at times I have to judge more than one nut at a time.

Well, I can't see the image, but what kind of nuts? Metal or Nylon?

metal, Reply to [email protected] and I'll send you a jpeg if you are interested.

I've been using the Series - IV with the advanced toolset lately. The cost is several hundred per unit but they do alot of same things as the next high-end systems do and easier to set up. Have you tried the inspection tool auto tuning function yet?

Is that something in the software upgrade? Or do I have to upgrade the cameras as well?