Portfolio

CHALLENGE

A shrink wrap product sleeve is placed onto the bottle before entering into a steam tunnel. Occasionally the shrink wrap label is not in the correct position or gets snagged. This causes an unaesthetic package that is not suitable for retail. Each bottle must be manually inspected prior to filling. Shrink wrap colors are anything across the rainbow and many shades in between, including shades of white placed on a white bottle.

SOLUTION

The bottle is side-belt transferred to an exit conveyor, and the bottle is inspected with a GigE camera. Using a combination of UV and white LED lighting, along with a specialty cut filter, the UV lighting causes a blue shift in the color of the product sleeve, while the color of the white bottle appears to be grey. Due to the reliability with traditional color segmentation working with greys, an in-house custom color segmentation routine was used to segment the exposed bottom of the bottle that is not covered by the product sleeve. This allowed the bottle to be profiled and measured, allowing for a quantitative pass/fail decision.

TAGS
Color, Consumer Products, PC-based Vision

CHALLENGE

Car interiors are often customized for their material, trim, and user features.  Variations may be subtle and batch runs are small.  An end-of-line inspection system is needed to ensure the product that was assembled matches the build ticket.

SOLUTION

A camera with a bright field and dark field configuration was mounted to the end of an ABB robot.  The operator loads an assembled car door interior onto an open nest and presses the Inspect bottom.  The robot would move to 20 different locations on the backside of the car door interior, triggering the camera/lights, and then requested the operator to rotate the fixture. The robot then moved to 6 different locations, triggering the camera/lights for each.  

A mock display is presented to the Operator for pass/fail of all zones.  The operator had the ability to select a zone to see the image taken and individual pass/fail results for each Poka-Yoke item.

TAGS
Color, Gauging, Identification, Inspection, Pattern Matching, Automotive, PC-based Vision, Vision Guided Robotics

CHALLENGE

Prior to loading the tire for shipment, the highpoint is located and the sidewall of the tire is marked with a red dot, white dot, white P, white N or a sticker.  Storage and material handling of the tire can cause the highpoint mark to get rubbed off or faded.

SOLUTION

Cognex VisionPro was used to identify and verify the presence/absence of the various types of highpoint marks based on the product SKU.

TAGS
Color, Identification, Pattern Matching, Automotive, PC-based Vision

CHALLENGE

Tires of similar sizes can be produced with different tread patterns.  A color band is applied on the tread surface based on the product SKU to ensure the wrong product is not mixed in with the shipment.

SOLUTION

Cognex VisionPro was used to blend the color band together (because of the gap between tread lugs) and a color match is performed to verify it matches with the current SKU.

TAGS
Color, Identification, Automotive, PC-based Vision

CHALLENGE

A fuse block assembly for a car or truck has similar frames, but what goes into them can vary.  A component can easily be missed, such as a fuse or diode or the wrong relay model installed.

SOLUTION

A GUI was developed to allow an Engineer to train a new component (color, pattern matching, OCR) and add it to a component family.  Once populated with components, an Engineer can create a product SKU and create a Region of Interests (ROIs) for each component location on the fuse block.  The engineer can choose the allowed orientation of the component for the ROI. 
With a fully configured product, an Operator can recall the SKU from a part list and batch inspect multiple fuse blocks.  Any component that is missing, in the wrong orientation, pattern score is too low, or OCR is mismatched, then the ROI is highlighted in red.  Components that pass are highlighted in green.

TAGS
Color, Identification, Inspection, OCR, Pattern Matching, Automotive, Electronics, PC-based Vision

CHALLENGE

Brazing paste is dispensed onto a sprocket gear before entering the oven.  Too much, too little, or not in the correct position will cause a poor weld. 

SOLUTION

A Cognex InSight Camera was used to determine the orientation of the sprocket with pattern matching and provide offset information to the dispensing robot.  The robot would dispense two blobs of paste between the teeth of the sprocket on opposite sides.  After the application, the smart camera applied blob analysis to verify the amount of brazing paste dispense was within tolerance.

TAGS
Color, Inspection, Industrial Products, Smart Camera

CHALLENGE

Vinyl floor manufacturer was looking to increase the consistency of their product by detecting foreign color chips, shade breaks, and "eye poppers."  Vinyl flooring is made by grinding up various color chips, heating them, and rolling them flat.  Since broken tiles are often ground and put back in the mix, any tiles left over from the previous batch run could introduce undesirable variances.

SOLUTION

A PC-based vision system segmented the image for the tile. During the training, the process scanned and identified all the grouped colored signatures, including the background average color—tiles with background shade breaks and non-conformances were rejected.  After multiple consecutive rejects, an operator was alerted.

TAGS
Color, Inspection, Consumer Products, PC-based Vision