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Today’s vision inspection systems are a matter of evolution—in technology, user-friendliness and, perhaps most importantly, attitudes.  Until fairly recently vision inspection systems were largely the domain of the returnable bottle markets, generally to look at empty bottles to ensure there were no manufacturing defects or contamination. Today, beverage producers are taking a proactive approach, observes Carl Bonnan, general manager of inspection equipment supplier Heuft USA (Downers Grove, Ill.).
“The mindset for the past 30 years has been, ‘Well, we as an end user don’t really want to spend the money on expensive vision technology to inspect our bottles,’” Bonnan says. “But we’re definitely seeing more and more companies interested in contamination inspection, so there’s no sabotage and to protect themselves from anything that shouldn’t be in the bottle and cull out any contaminated bottles.” Past systems also had perception working against them. From a user interface standpoint, they often had been viewed as too complex and difficult. But, as technology has advanced, so has ease of use. “They’re now intuitive so you can pretty much walk up to it and understand it without having to go through a lot of training,” says Bonnan. The digital video revolution is no less prevalent among vision inspection systems as today’s visual frame grabbers enable operators to pinpoint single frames at unprecedented speeds. And, as hard drives hold more in smaller units, the same holds true for the storage capacity on digital inspection systems. And, as most companies install systems that are ethernet compatible, they not only can inspect, but can track and evaluate processes more proactively. “If you’ve had 20 consecutive defects, the old school method was to shut the line down and see what was wrong with the machine,” Bonnan explains. “But today, rather than waiting and reacting, people are analyzing continually what’s going on every 5,000 bottles, every 10,000 bottles, etc. and reacting to that information. That’s a big step forward.” From Beverage World February 15, 2008 |
