PET cap inspection & bottle scanning solution
IMD Vista’s booth highlighted their strategic collaboration with Origin Materials in the development of the world’s premier PET cap and closure manufacturing system. The Swiss company provides subsystems tailored for conveying, orienting, and inspecting the caps.
Martin Gerber, Chief Sales Officer (CSO) at IMD, emphasised the developmental ingenuity invested in these solutions: “There were several feeding and handling challenges with this new design and lightweight solution. Furthermore, we had to tailor the camera inspection to accommodate the highly transparent material.” Given the absence of reference specifications, Origin and IMD collaborated for over 12 months to ensure the same level of process reliability for the new PET caps as for HDPE or PP solutions. “Our experience in preform inspection proved beneficial here and we were able to make some adaptions with regards to camera inspection of highly transparent PET materials,” explained Gerber.
Modular inspection of bottles & containers
Another novelty introduced by IMD Vista is the Boco Scan, marking the company’s foray into bottle inspection territory. “It was always clear to us that when taking this leap, we wanted to offer something exceptional, setting ourselves apart from the competition,” remarked Gerber. The new system is designed for the 360° inspection of transparent, opaque, shiny, and matte bottles and containers, conducting inspections not through photographs but via a scanning method. “This has the advantage of mitigating reflections, common in bottles with intricate contours, which could otherwise distort the results,” elucidated Gerber. Crucial to the company was the system’s facile changeover and seamless integration into production lines. It has been designed as one standard system for all bottle types without format parts and ensures a plug-and-play experience, no matter which type of bottle the customer needs to inspect. “Boco Scan boasts versatile applicability, rendering it suitable for many industries. In addition to beverage and cosmetic bottles, we are also looking towards the agricultural sector. Containers for this market were hitherto unsuitable for standardised and highly automated inspection. The response from this sector at NPE was exceedingly positive,” Gerber concluded.
Caption: Martin Gerber, CSO at IMD with the Origin PET caps for which IMD provides several subsystems
