Development and product integration of a reliable optoelectronic system using Taguchi method

A description is given of the successful development and optimization of an optoelectronic registration sensor that is used in a copier document handler to detect translucent documents. The Taguchi method was used as an integral part of the product development process to evaluate two design concepts, with the objective of maximizing the optical contrast between no document and translucent documents. Each combination of controllable factors, as dictated by an L18 orthogonal array, was evaluated against a compound noise matrix, which forced response variation. Maximum signal-to-noise ratio criteria were then utilized to select the best design concept and optimum level for the associated parameters to ensure robust performance in the presence of the system noises. The optimized sensor is robust against system noise factors such as paper particle contamination, ambient light, temperature variation, and other system variations