PETpla.net Insider 07+08 / 2020

INSPECTION 18 PETplanet Insider Vol. 21 No. 07+08/20 www.petpla.net The IMDvista Boco Scan Today’s next generation bottle inspection For more than a decade bottle vision inspection systems have been stagnant. Bottle manufactures have been forced to use systems with limited capabilities, which still required increased manual inspection costs. Systems were not capable inspect clear and opaque bottles on the same system. Measurements were not accurate enough for injected finish bottles and systems were difficult to change over. INSPECTION In 2017, IMD Ltd. took up the chal- lenge to address these difficulties and began engineering the next genera- tion in bottle inspection system named the IMDvista Boco Scan. During the next two years, IMD engineers began designing new lighting techniques, new algorithms and new hardware. Market research was performed to understand the requirements of poten- tial customers. Different types of bot- tles were collected and an improved R&D was done on these bottles. This resulted in an advanced bottle inspec- tion system including calibrated meas- urements, unique in the market today. Major challenge The first major challenge was the ability to inspect multiple different types of bottles using the same system; transparent, natural, opaque, shiny, flat, smooth and structured. Each of these types of bottles requires differ- ent lighting and camera techniques to achieve optimal inspection results. For example, a customer may run a clear PET bottle and a white shiny PET bottle on the same line. Traditionally this would require two completely dif- ferent designs of hardware configura- tions; backlighting for clear and front lighting for opaque as well as different camera angles due to the clear bottles. The shiny white bottles would cause multiple lighting reflections causing a limited side inspection for contamina- tion, scratches or burn marks. The Boco Scan has the capability of inspecting all of these bottles within a compact single module. Using four special high-resolution cameras (12.5 megapixels) and proprietary light- ing configuration most complex bottle designs are capable of inspection. IMDvista Neuron Additionally, using Artificial Intel- ligence (AI) the system can learn and easily distinguish a good bottle from a defective bottle. Most bottles have some natural defects to them, espe- cially extruded bottles. These defects do not affect the integrity or performance of the bottle. Many vision systems cannot tell the difference between these natural process driven bottle marks and actual defects. This is alleviated with the use of AI, the Boco Scan gets smarter over time. This is useful with bottle with strong structural features. Accurate measurement The second major challenge was the ability to perform extremely accu- rate measurements on the finish. Many bottle manufacturers still resort to pulling bottle samples and performing measurements in the quality lab. This still allows for some error depending on the operators level of experience. IMD took on the challenge to introduce lab quality measurements in an automated online inspection system. By imple-