Whether inspecting the sanitary packaging of consumable goods to monitoring the sealant in batteries, vision technology is increasingly being used in almost every single manufacturing industry imaginable. Machine vision is used today to accurately control the quality of your final goods, guide your robotic machines or add track-ability to improve your manufacturing process. Take a look at just five of the important factors to consider in your search to find the best machine vision system to meet your needs.
The Software Matters – Keep it Simple
For many visual inspections, the difference in software could mean getting up and running by configuring, benchmarking, and deploying vision applications but testing is critical to a sustainable success rate. Check out EPIC’s own EVS Utility software. Software that’s initially configured or programmed incorrectly often times costs more in the long run to get inspections right. So with the proper lighting, camera and position strategies in place, you’re laying the framework for accurate quality control without added headaches down the road. By starting with a handful of images and products to test, you can apply and iterate on these conditions until you have a very large library of images on which you can then run the inspection to determine whether you have obtained the desired results, detected false rejects, or missed defects.
A Scalable System
Can the machine vision system be configured to meet your needs as they change? Are processors and systems set up to optimize your vision system’s performance, including dedicated processors in real-time systems as well as multicore and DSP coprocessor architectures, to improve speed and optimize performance along the assembly line? As your hardware requirements evolve, make sure that your system can grow proportionately in scale with you.
A Camera That Compliments Your Objectives
Like most other things in life, no machine vision system or camera is created equal. Depending on your manufacturing goals and conditions, different cameras are best suited to a certain type of image sensor. Options such as spanning area-scan, monochrome and color sensors as well as specialty sensors such as thermal (infrared), 3D and line-scan can all be applied successfully depending on the depth of need. It’s very important to keep in-plant inspection conditions in mind when developing camera strategies and choosing hardware. For example, inspecting quick-moving rolls of textile requires a line-scan sensor while measuring hot metal in a dusty, dark environment requires a thermal camera.
Digital Imaging Standards
It’s no secret. The industry is rapidly moving away from analog technologies into the digital era, there are a lot of imaging standards to choose from and the best fit will depend on your needs. Whether you’re looking for a lower-cost solution or high resolution and throughput, the digital revolution provides for all that you may need for extremely fast measurements on precise parts.
Multiple Camera Connections
For inspections that require multiple cameras for simultaneous inspection, or where many parallel visual inspections are happening, consider machine vision partners like EPIC Vision Solutions. EPIC’s custom vision systems can be custom designed and implemented on your line with multiple cameras working together simultaneously for the highest levels of accuracy along the way.
EPIC is a machine vision integrator out of St. Louis, MO. To learn more about EPIC, visit our website or contact an engineer today.
