JPH05340739

PURPOSE:To obtain an orientation inspector for automatically judging the orientation of a spring with unequal pitch. CONSTITUTION:The title inspector is provided with a lighting part 4 which irradiates the outer periphery of a spring 1 with unequal pitch linearly in axial direction with a laser slit beam 5, an image pick-up part 6 which picks up the image of a part 3 to be irradiated of the spring 1 by applying only a laser reflection beam 5' from the spring 1 to a camera 9 by a filter 7, and an operation judging part 10 which judges the orientation of the spring 1. The part 3 to be irradiated of the spring 1 is aligned linearly, each second coil winding pitch from both edges is calculated by the operation judging part 10, and then the orientation of the spring 1 is judged by comparing the two coil winding pitches.