Feature Machine Vision Systems Industry Comment...
A view from the UKIVA
by Dr John Haddon, UKIVA consultant
elcome to the first in a regular column from the UK Industrial Vision Association (UKIVA), to com- plement Automation magazine’s regular machine vision features. The UKIVA is a ‘Special Interest Group’ in the PPMA (Processing and Packaging Machinery Association),
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and whose members include vision technology providers, vision systems integrators and consultants and providers of solutions that utilise machine vision. Vision is an ‘enabling’ technology and vision sys-
tems can carry out tasks that would be impossible to perform in any other way. Whether it is the speed of inspection required, or the repeatability of measurement results, or a combination of the two, vision systems give the scope to do more than could be achieved by a human operator. It can therefore open up better, more diverse and more effective ways of doing things which may not have been previously considered, making vision an ideal automation partner.
The integration of vision systems into industrial
processes is now technically easier. From individual components with a choice of inputs and outputs, exter- nal triggers, industry standard data transfer protocols and easy to program inspection software, to smart cam- eras where the result of an inspection can be transferred over an Ethernet connection, the vision industry is now very much geared towards lower cost integration. In addition, the integration of vision with robots has become easier, and the availability of affordable 3D vision has opened up a greater range of applications. Vision has an important part to play in monitoring,
regulating, checking, analysing, sorting and classifying to provide an automated ‘pass/fail’ function in quality control, and choosing where a vision system is used in a manufacturing process can have a significant effect on production costs. End of line inspection prevents defec- tive product reaching the customer, but can result in a lot of waste, not only in terms of the amount of defective product produced, but also in the energy consumption and time used in producing the defective product. In principle, the earlier in the process that a vision system can be used, the earlier it would be possible to detect if the product is starting to go out of specification. This allows preventative action to be taken and offers further automation capabilities if vision measurements are inte- grated into statistical process control (SPC) methods with a view to controlling the manufacturing process within its allowed tolerances. In many applications, 100% inspection can be carried out, and measurement data can be fed into the SPC system.
UK Industrial Vision Association
www.ukiva.org T: 0208 773 8111
12 Aiding French researchers
Keyence’s VHX-1000 digital microscope is being utilised by the Montpellier Laboratory of Computer Science, Robotics, and Microelectronics (LIRMM) in a number of applications to observe surfaces at 1,000x magnification, capture images as large as 100 megapixels and share these images with very little effort
IRMM is a joint research unit of the University of Montpellier 2 (UM2) and France’s National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). It conducts research in the field of sciences and technologies for information, communication and systems. The applications are varied and include medicine, with the implantation of ASICs to compensate for neurological disorders or paralysis (functional electrical stimulation). The objective of LIRMM’s Microelectronics Department (MIC) is to propose solutions that have a genuinely disruptive impact on current approaches. The MIC department’s operations range from the design to the testing of low end integrated systems (electrical and/or transis- tors) to high end integrated systems (architec- tures, systems). The MIC department also conducts research on adaptive architectures - microprocessor systems interconnected by redundant networks for fault tolerance pur- poses - as well as cross-cutting issues such as digital security, reliability and resilience. “We work with companies on prototypes and manufacturing processes that are not always stable. Failures are common and our job is to analyse every potential cause of these failures, such as poor traces and connections and the presence of dust. These highly detailed observa- tions require a high level of magnification and high image quality,” explained Laurent de Knyff of LIRMM’s MIC Department. Generally, the chips used by LIRMM mea- sure 2-3mm in size and are made using 65nm technology, meaning that the gate of the MOS transistor (a basic building block of micro- electronics) measures 65nm long.
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We then archive these images for later analy- sis. Because ASICs are fragile and we want to limit their handling to a minimum - this is a major plus point,” added de Knyff. The VHX-1000 produces panoramic images as large as 10,000 x 10,000 pixels, or 100 megapixels. That translates to a 50-fold increase in the size of the high magnification field of view (normal field of view - 1,600 x 1,200 pixels). This is made possible by the market’s most powerful ultra-fast automatic image stitching function (2D stitching). When the image stitching button is pressed, the stage shifts and images are captured and automatically spliced together in real time. de Knyff continued, “In addition, MEMS and certain other parts we analyse are not flat. The VHX supports automatic adjust- ments to achieve a large depth of field and produce sharp, high quality images regard- less of differences in depth.
Fit for purpose
“The VHX digital microscope suits our accu- racy needs perfectly. It captures extremely sharp, high resolution images easily and quickly. We use a 100W VHZ lens, most often at 1,000x magnification.” The VHX features a 16-bit HDR function that uses 16-bits-per-pixel encoding and HDR (high dynamic range) tech- nology to create sharp images regardless of the contrast of the target.
“One thing that we really like about the Enter 202
VHX is that it’s a digital tool that runs like a PC. It’s clear, simple menus are intuitive and enable us to create highly useful automated functions. We use the real time on-screen measurements and particularly like the image stitching function, which allows us to create large images of ASICs in just a few dozen seconds regardless of the image size.
“The half day of training we received from one of Keyence’s sales engineers was sufficient to allow us to start getting the images we needed. The optical adjustments are a little more complex of course, but you shouldn’t hesitate to use the VHX’s automatic adjust- ments. They allow you to play with the light- ing and other parameters.
“In addition to its efficiency for our scien- tific observations, the VHX allows us to cap- ture clear images and share them with colleagues, industrial partners and the scien- tific community. Our old method was ama- teurish and consisted of taking pictures through the eyepiece of an old microscope. It was both time consuming and inconvenient and the images were not as good.”
Keyence UK
www.keyence.co.uk T: 01908 696 900
Enter 203 JANUARY 2014 Automation
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