System and method for inspection using off-angle lighting

A method for inspecting a component comprising:

• illuminating the component with off-angle lighting to increase the visibility of one or more types of features;
• generating image data of the component;
• and
• analyzing at least three relative maxima of histogram data generated with the image data to determine whether any of the one or more types of features are present.

A system for inspecting components comprising:

• an axial lighting system illuminating the component with axial lighting to allow one or more features of the component to be located;
• an off-axis lighting system illuminating the component with off-axis lighting to allow the component to be inspected to locate one or more features;
• and
• a dual lighting analysis system analyzing image data of the component created when the axial lighting system and the off-axis lighting system are simultaneously illuminating the component and generating component acceptance data.

A system for inspecting components comprising:

• an axial lighting system illuminating a component with axial lighting to allow one or more features of the component to be located;
• an off-axis lighting system illuminating the component with off-axis lighting in the absence of the axial lighting to allow the component to be inspected to locate one or more features of the component;
• and
• a band analysis system receiving image data of the component and analyzing the image data to identify two or more edges to determine whether a band between the two or more edges identifies the one or more features.