FEATURE MACHINE VISION SYSTEMS INDUSTRY COMMENT
by Dr John Haddon, technical consultant to UKIVA and director, Panther Vision
ow is the industrial vision market faring in the UK? A number of surveys and forecasts published in the last few months have indicated healthy growth for vision worldwide. Sources such as the AIA, VDMA and Frost & Sullivan all predict growth in machine vision sales going forward, observing an increasing trend towards ‘non-factory’ applications. Although a brief survey of UKIVA
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members in August 2013 indicated that there had been a recent up- turn in the sales of vision systems to manufacturing sectors in the UK, there are no hard and fast statistics available that relate solely to the vision market in the UK. UKIVA has decided to address this shortfall with its plan to carry out a quarterly survey with UKIVA members to collect and collate data on the number of units sold in the following categories - smart cameras/sensors, code readers, compact vision systems, PC-based vision systems, machine vision cameras, 3D systems and systems deployed to end users. In order to ensure that no individual
member has access to another’s sales figures, the UKIVA is following the same approach as that of BARA (British Automation and Robot Association). Both are special interest groups of the PPMA (Processing & Packaging Machinery Association), and an independent member of the PPMA team collates the data for BARA in strict confidence. Now a well established activity within BARA, it has proved an invaluable quarterly and annual benchmark for each of the member companies in how the industry is performing against their own sales, and the process should bring similar benefits for participating UKIVA members. In addition, another sign of the health of the industry in the UK comes from the fact that four companies have joined the ranks of the UKIVA in the last couple of months - Acrovision, AlphaChase, IDS Imaging Development Systems and Scandinavian Machine Vision.
UKIVA
www.ukiva.org T: 0208 773 8111
Let vision be your guide
Basler’s scout GigE cameras are playing a key role in a cost effective, automated robotic clipping process that has increased efficiency for food storage provider, Sistema
T
he distinctive plastic clips on Sistema’s plastic products are well known in households across
New Zealand, and increasingly around the world. Although the clips had traditionally been attached on the base of a container, when Sistema introduced a new range which featured smaller clips attached to the lid, issues in the manual production process led to the search for an automated solution. Workers were finding it physically challenging to apply the clips to the lids, and as the clipping process was run offline (the lids were moulded and sealed separately, before being collected to have the clips applied) one automation solution would work for multiple product lines. Having already worked with Sistema to successfully
install a camera guided robotic labelling system, Basler partner ControlVision was tasked with providing a solution to enable the automation of the clipping process.
ACCURACY AT HIGH SPEED A major challenge of the project was ensuring precise accuracy for the clip placement while maintaining a high speed on a moving conveyor, as there was an overall tolerance of less than 0.5mm for the clip to be successfully applied. It was also vital that the system could handle a wide range of lid sizes and shapes, as well as different clip colours.
In order to obtain the high quality images
required to meet the stringent tolerance requirements for the solution, ControlVision chose four Basler scout cameras to obtain images of both the clips and the lids. In the system, two conveyor belts carry the lids
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and clips separately in parallel. Encoder feedback is employed to enable the accurate tracking of the clips and lids on the moving conveyors. Upstream of the robots, a Basler scout scA640- 74gm GigE camera captures an image of the clip, which is sent to the VisionServer software to
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determine its position. Once the position is determined, VisionServer guides one of the Dual Adept Cobra s600 robots into picking up the clip. A separate, higher resolution camera, a Basler 2
MP scout scA1600-14gm, then captures an image of a corresponding lid, which is also processed by the VisionServer software to locate its position. This guides the robot into applying the clip, and the process is repeated for the second clip. As all lids have either three or four clips, the second robot applies the third and/or fourth clip downstream.
HMI As well as managing the robot operation, ControlVision’s VisionServer framework also acts as the human machine interface (HMI) for the system, enabling easy configuration of parameters and monitoring of the whole operation. Since the clipper has been installed,
clips are now applied to lids at a rate of one every two seconds. This equates to double the output of the previous process, with operators now able to run twice the volume of product, resulting in
immediate labour savings for Sistema. Another advantage is the system’s versatility, as
Sistema’s engineering manager Oliver Jensen explained, “There’s no product changeover procedure - any lid on the conveyor can be clipped since the system looks for any clip position on a lid, regardless of the shape or size. For example, even if we were doing a run of round lids, if there was a square lid placed in between them, the clips would still be applied.” A video of the solution can be watched at
http://tinyurl.com/px2h9e9.
Basler
www.baslerweb.com T: +49 4102 4630
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