Machine Vision Appliances

Putting it simply

How do you know that all those products coming off the production line are within tolerance, completely assembled and ready for shipment? Even if the line is built for remarkable consistency, there still may be a need to compile statistics for trends such as tool wear or how to predict when a machine or tool may be serviced.

Bar code inspection setup

The top priorities listed by process engineers when evaluating a machine vision system are performance and ease of use. Performance is listed as the number one priority when selecting a machine vision system. Ease of use is critical when operators with multiple duties support highly sophisticated vision products on the factory floor. A simple interface that can be adjusted by the operator is the second most valued feature of a vision system

Having listened to these priorities, vision companies such as iPD are developing vision systems that are simple to implement, cost effective and user-friendly. With the guarantee that your vision system is up and running with the minimum of disturbance to your manufacturing line.

Enter Vision Appliances

So what is a Vision Appliance? Simply, it is a prepackaged machine vision solution with a simple and practical user interface. Recognising that there are numerous places where easy-to-deploy vision solutions are needed across the spectrum of manufacturing environments, one company currently producing vision appliances is iPD (www.goipd.com). iPD have produced Vision Appliances that can be rapidly deployed with little disturbance to the factory floor, and can start producing results immediately.

Vision appliances come preinstalled with intuitive software that is easily configured by process engineers or factory maintenance staff. Accessing your information can be done directly via a PC compliant Vision Appliance or via the internet as each vision appliance uses a web interface. This allows for real-time information to be accessed from a computer next to the manufacturing line or remotely.

High speed bottle cap inspection

Common Problem - Specific Solutions

Currently iPD manufacturers vision appliances available on the market that are designed for specific tasks that many manufacturers have to deal with on their production line. These tasks spread across a range of industries and through the use of vision appliances can greatly reduce the costs of inspection.

Gauging

iNspect vision appliance

Gauging vision appliances were designed to precisely and accurately measure part specifications. Examples include measuring critical dimensions on a part, verifying the presence and size of holes in a machined part, measuring diameter and circularity of holes, verifying the correct number and size of pills in a blister pack

Gauging appliances can take thousands of measurements per second. It can measure attributes such as circularity or surface markings that are hard or impossible for contact gauging or optical systems to handle. Because machine vision is non-contact, the part is not damaged. In most cases, machine-vision gauging can replace contact gauging, as it will be faster and more precise.

There are three key factors that are required to ensure your gauging appliance is a success: they are repeatability, accuracy and precision. Repeatability defines how close together repeated measurements are or refers to the variance of the measurements. Accuracy defines how close the measurements are to the true value. You can think of accuracy as the mean difference between the repeated measurements and the true value. Precision is the number of digits to which the measurement gauge can be read.

All three of these characteristics are needed for the gauging appliance to achieve good performance. Some machine-vision systems are capable of high precision - up to six or seven digits. However, if the system cannot achieve a stated level of accuracy and repeatability, a high level of precision is meaningless. Vision appliances are built to ensure that your gauging application can be installed and operational in minutes.

Assembly and Verification

Vision appliances are well suited for product assembly and verification applications. The user-friendly interface allows for changes to be made easily to the appliance framework. Assembly and Verification can be quickly configured and deployed in a manufacturing or production environment. Vision appliances have been specifically built for assembly and verification applications which include detection of missing or incorrect products in a package, checking cap and safety seals to ensure that they are positioned correctly, detecting and verifying barcodes and many other applications. Because of the ease of integration and low cost of vision appliances your return on investment can be quickly determined. The iCheck is a vision appliance that has been specifically designed for assembly and verification.

Label Verification

iCheck vision appliance

Label verification vision appliances are specifically built to determine acceptable variations in the manufacturing process or environments which are easily captured using a "show and learn" technique. The resulting model is used during inspection to determine if a label is within the learned specification.

Vision appliances have proven to be very popular in food and beverage industries where product presentation is essential. Vision appliances for rapidly checking the placement and quality of labels on bottles, boxes, cans and other ridged packaged goods have improved the efficiency of manufacturing lines and guaranteed a new level of quality and consistency in label verification.

With the ability to fully configure inspection (size and shape), "don't care" regions and selectable reference areas for label alignment, it is possible for vision appliances to be configured and deployed with the minimum of delay and at a low or no integration cost. Label verification vision appliances check labels for flags, tears and missing portions of labels. They can also detect a variety of defects including smears, spatter and contamination. Label verification vision appliances have built in compensation for lighting variations. This feature can prove useful in changing environments, or for factories that operate 24 hours a day, 7days a week.

Access remotely or locally

Multiple Camera Inspection appliances

iPD Vision appliances have also been built to service manufacturers who need high performance vision systems. Designed for high speed applications with up to 60 parts per second these vision appliances have the capacity to process up to 3 independent image views simultaneously. High performance vision appliances often have a local display option for viewing runtime images and results while also offering remote access for product monitoring. By utilising the multiple camera inputs it is possible to inspect the front, back and top surfaces simultaneously. The iNspect is an example of a vision appliance that has been developed specifically for multiple camera inspection.

Where to from here

The Machine Vision industry is only just developing to a point where you don't have to spend your whole budget and shut down your line for days in order to get a vision system installed. With the expected decrease in costs, and rapid development of technology, vision appliances have found a way to handle many manufacturer's inspection problems without the risk that has been traditionally associated with machine vision projects.

What to look for when selecting a Vision Appliance -

• Ease of use to ensure correct application. Make sure that all personnel who will be using the machine vision product have been quickly trained I use of the appliance interface.
• Connectivity to other plant floor automation, and to information systems, business programs for ease of integration.
• Automatic compensation for lighting and control variations, and for lens and perspective distortion, to provide greater inspection reliability.
• Industrially hardened housing to withstand demanding plant floor environments.
• Input/Output capabilities so that the vision system can make decisions and control accordingly what happens when parts or products are accepted or rejected.
• Historical/archiving capabilities that enable users to review data accumulated from the vision system, identify the causes of any ongoing manufacturing problems and adjust them accordingly to increase quality in the most effective manner possible.