Vision – the innovation necessary to sort 180,000 parts per day

Vision – the innovation necessary to sort 180,000 parts per day

Innovative German machine builder, Schuster-Präzision found themselves faced with the challenge of providing a customer with a machine that could accurately sort 180,000 drill parts every day. They chose Cognex vision systems as the robust and innovative component that would make the difference on their sorting machines.

Many metal processing companies use their specialised machines for the production of what accounts for approximately 97% of all drill components produced globally. These range from large masonry and metal drills right down to fine drills for medical use. As a manufacturer of special machines, Schuster-Präzision, Germany, ensures that their customers can assure the smooth running of various processes such as sorting, turning, milling and cutting parts to the correct length. Quality assurance and automation technology are of the highest priority. When it comes to the sorting of large numbers of parts, it is essential that the systems performing the task are completely reliable and capable of enduring the rigors of continuous operation.

Key component – In-Sight vision systems

One of the most important components of these special machines are In-Sight vision systems from Cognex. For example, one of Schuster’s largest customers, who manufactures 180,000 drill pieces per day, can count on 100% accurate sorting thanks to these precise sensors.

In the first step of the sorting process, the container of the machine, which is equipped with an In-Sight 5100 from Cognex, is filled with several thousand drill components. A sliding mechanism then moves the individual pieces down a ramp and on to a conveyor line.

In-Sight guarantees correct part positioning and orientation

The In-Sight and a special gripper ensure that the heads of the drill bits point in the correct direction. With its precise sensors, the system detects the positions of the parts and transfers this information to the microprocessor of the container. If a drill component is positioned correctly, it is simply transported further on towards the output area. If a drill piece is not positioned correctly however , the In-Sight informs the gripper who grabs it and positions it correctly so it can continue to the output area with the other pieces. This is a simple process but it requires reliable machine components because of the large numbers of parts being processed.

In-Sight - robust vision for a tough industrial environment

As in many other areas of the metal processing industry, machines must be robust in order to achieve required precision, reliability and to operate round-the-clock. The vibrations caused by mechanical conveyors, jolts from pneumatic systems and the dust in the production areas present quite a challenge to precision machinery. Vision systems from Cognex are built to be particularly robust so that quality standards are always maintained, even under the most difficult conditions. Equipped with die cast housings, lens protectors and M12 connectors with seals, they can withstand even the roughest industrial environments.

The indispensable tool

Today, the In-Sight 5000 family is indispensable for Schuster-Präzision because it guarantees high-quality production systems. General manager and company founder Helmut Schuster can no longer imagine his special machines without Cognex systems, “With Cognex, complete reliability, innovative technologies and excellent service allow us to meet our quality standards 100% of the time and allow us to plan our business effectively. Another benefit is that In-Sight can be operated simply and reliably.”

Bottle crown and cap inspection

100% fault detection on high-speed bottle crowning line

Integrating a user-friendly vision sensors into a multiple-product bottle crowning line provides a simple solution to fault detecting for leading Australian brewery.

Tooheys currently produces more than 300 million liters of beer annually from its Lidcombe-based brewery in Sydney’s west. Any company operating in a production critical industry on this scale knows just how damaging undetected product defects can be to business and understands the true value of an effective product defect inspection system. At Tooheys, two product lines running multiple bottled products are required to make frequent product changes – often in the course of a 24-hour period. With each product change requiring a change in bottle crown or cap incorrect bottle crowning can occur. Add to this a line speed running at 1200 bottles per minute and it is easy to see why a fast and reliable defect inspection solution was necessary to satisfy Tooheys’ stringent quality controls.

A high-tech solution for high-speed production
Machinery Automation & Robotics’ (MAR) approach to the bottle crowning inspection project at Tooheys was simple. Use advanced technology to create a user-friendly solution. The Cognex Insight 5400 vision sensor was selected for its speed and interface ability, its capacity to detect defects in any 360-degree orientation and its robust design – the system undergoes regular wash downs. And the ability to make changes to the threshold determining acceptance of variable product qualities – detecting scratches, water blobs, misprints or print faults, for example – means that the defective product rejection accuracy rate of the Cognex Insight vision system is extremely high.

The vision system at work
Two Cognex Insight 5400 vision sensors are installed on Tooheys’ AB2 bottling lines, each inspecting for correct crown placement on the product selected. Product selection itself is achieved simply via a touch screen/HMI. The camera is mounted on an adjustable post, specifically designed to allow for bottle height variations. Upon product selection the camera is simply moved up or down to maintain a camera focal length of 125mm from the top of the bottle crown. Along with the camera itself, the mounting bracket houses a DOAL lighting system, used to emit a red light on to the crowns. The red-cut lens cover filters out ambient light, resulting in a highly accurate image being captured by the camera.

All controls for the vision sensors are wired back to the line’s main electrical panel. Within the panel lies the power supply for the DOAL lighting system and the Insight cameras. The panel also houses the I/O module. This module interfaces with the vision sensor and the PLC, allowing product changes to be loaded into In-Sight and output changes to be relayed to the reject mechanism. Consequently, if an incorrect crown is detected the bottle is rejected further down the line via a delayed signal sent from the PLC. For ease, the cameras can be monitored via an Ethernet connection back to a local PC. Program changes can also be made at this point with the Cognex Insight Explorer software, making new product changes very simple.

Working together for independence
By adopting a strong teamwork approach to this project MAR has designed and engineered a vision sensor solution employing user-friendly software, which Tooheys is able to fully operate independently. Acting in an advisory capacity MAR provided assistance with the initial integration process enabling Tooheys’ staff to undertake the vision system installation autonomously. Comprehensive training provided to Tooheys’ staff by MAR on software installation, programming and modifications, bottle crown changeover processes, and basic operational procedures for the Cognex Insight vision systems package has allowed Tooheys to undertake subsequent unit installations and programming.

Adding up the benefits
Addressing the issue of defect detection on high speed, multiple product production lines with a simple yet effective integrated vision system solution has provided Tooheys with many benefits including:
• An integrated vision system including electrical and mechanical design, software and functional design, vision I/O interface to PLC, installation, modification and on-line commissioning
• A user-friendly vision system solution and comprehensive training package enabling independent installation, programming and operation by the client
• An effective partnership of world-leading Cognex vision technology and MAR’s extensive vision system integration experience
• Expertise in lens, lighting and camera selections
• A robust and reliable vision system designed for high-speed lines

Technology at work for Tooheys
• The control system features a Siemens S7 PLC and uses software code and field sensors to detect product to be inspected by the vision sensors and provide relevant outputs to operate the reject mechanism
• Two high-speed outputs are standard with the vision system.
• The interface between the Cognex Insight 5400 cameras and the Siemens PLC is via a Cognex I/O module and a field cable link. The I/O module then inputs to the Siemens PLC in the same panel
• A single Cognex Insight 5400 camera inspects multiple defects in one image capture and recognition process at the above line speed
• The recognition tools available with the Cognex Insight Vision system detect incorrect, damaged or misprinted bottle crowns in any 360-degree orientation at typical line speeds
• Custom selected lighting solutions provide adequate lighting for each inspection station and remove ambient light changes adversely affecting the visual inspection process
• The Cognex Insight vision system has a high wash down rating IP67

Bottling line upgrade for defect elimination

Bottling inspection guaranteed by Cognex Checker

The automation solutions deployed in the Ottakringer Brauerei AG, Vienna, demonstrate the effectiveness and attractive cost/performance ratio of the Cognex ‘Checker 101′ sensor. Their inspection stations are now able to guarantee that beer crates and boxes of canned beverages contain the correct amount of product.

Check it with Checker!
Customer satisfaction is a decisive factor in face of tough competition in the brewery business. Ottakringer Brewery needed to guarantee packaging units contained the full number of defect-free products, as a quality measure to prevent customer complaints. The second-largest Austrian brewery was able to make significant production and quality improvements while reducing costs by using the intelligent ‘Checker 101′ high-speed sensor from Cognex. Image-based sensors are increasingly taking over the tasks previously performed by standard sensor technology. In this brewery, intelligent sensor technology benefited production lines and sales and also proved to be an important factor for the company’s activities in the competitive contract bottling market.

Quality and quantity ensured by smart sensor technology
The main priority of the brewery’s maintenance department is the inspection of beer crates and boxes of cans to ensure they contain the correct amount. Ottakringer contacted the image processing department of Cognex partner Schmachtl GmbH. The brewery’s production automation needs and priorities were established by the Schmachtl team. These tasks are performed successfully by ‘Checker 101′, the vision sensor solution from Cognex. In order to allow the brewery to develop an in-house solution, Schmachtl provided a test unit and specialist advice giving the maintenance team the flexibility to set up the checking station themselves. The ease of installation and operation as well as the simple programming of the system using a laptop computer proved significant advantages. The brewery was able to start automatically inspecting the boxes of beverage cans for in January 2006. The procedure involves passing each box along a running conveyor belt equipped with the Checker sensor to determine whether it contains 24 correctly inserted cans before the box is shrink-wrapped.. The results of the check are transferred directly to the production control system. Production flow is improved and batch production statistics are easily obtained.

Fast and scalable: from cans to crates
Their positive experiences with the checking system for boxes of cans encouraged the maintenance department introduce the solution to further applications. The next step was to introduce a completeness check on the beer crates. This inspection method needed to be replaced with a more modern, more flexible and more reliable checking technology. In the past, a complicated system technology using many individual sensors was used. The in-house maintenance department decided to use ‘Checker’ in February 2006 and the job was complete by March. The simple, space-saving design proved to be of great benefit, meaning that no fundamental changes to the conveyor line were required. Checker inspects the beer crates on the running conveyor belt to check they have the correct amount. Checker can also differentiate whether the bottles have light or dark tops thus performing an extra quality inspection on the bottling line. The intelligent sensor automatically adjusts to the respective product determining whether an 18, 20 or 24 bottle crate is on the line. The operating staff do not have to modify the checking station when changing the job type. The checking station now operates on a two to three-shift basis and reliably inspects beer crates at a rate of approximately one per second. Integration of Checker into the control technology of the production system was easy due to the standardized interface. Checker also causes the production belt to stop automatically if a fault is registered.

Operating staff are able to program new jobs quickly and easily at any time using a laptop. With the new “Train and Go” capability, new characteristics can be programmed into a sensor even without a PC. When the job type on the production line is changed, the Checker can automatically switch over to as many as 16 different sensor configurations in real time. As a result, this checking station still possesses significant flexibility potential in terms of product range and characteristic selection.

Internal success shows on the outside
An intelligent solution that means quality improvements are clearly noticeable right down to customer level ultimately contribute to an improved company image and the brewery is already checking the possibility of additional applications.
Checker – facts and figures

· Compact, independent all-in-one solution
· Small and robust, protection class IP67
· simple configuration and installation
· Integrated LED illumination and lens
· Analyses up to 500 images per second
· Direct process integration (no PLC required)
· No external trigger necessary
· Industrial I/O interface
· Integrated USB 2.0 interface
· 24 VDC operating voltage
· “Train and Go” capability
· Dimensions: 53.2 x 129.2 x 45.9 mm

Packing line upgrade for sorting and defect elimination

Rexam, Sweden: Better bottling thanks to Cognex vision systems

Supplying packaging to the world’s high profile consumer drinks manufacturers is serious business. Rexam is investing in vision to automatically inspect bottles in order to ensure that they are intact, clean and meet safety standards.

Rexam, a global enterprise that manufactures consumer packaging, is a world leader in plastic packaging for the cosmetic, pharmaceutical, food and beverage industries. Rexam’s plastic beverage container operations are located in Germany, Sweden and the Czech Republic. Sweden is home to two plastic manufacturing factories for food and beverages as well as one tin factory and a glass-works.

Great expectations
Rexam’s customers are large soft drink manufacturers in Nordic countries, such as Carlsberg, Spendrups and Coca-Cola. They all have high expectations and demands regarding the quality, logistics and visual appearance of these plastic bottles as well as end-consumer satisfaction. Rexam’s bottle factory in Lidköping, as well as other locations, manufactures 80 percent of all bottles sold in Nordic countries.

At Rexam in Lidköping, beverage containers are manufactured in five shifts round the clock, all year long. Rexam manufactures two main sorts of bottles, which are either refillable or recyclable. Refillable bottles are washed and refilled up to twenty-five times, while recyclable bottles are filled once and then ground up to be reused as raw material for new bottles, fleece clothing or another product using polyester as a raw material.

Vision: a key investment for long term quality control
By the end of the 1990’s the company had begun to invest in vision systems in order to improve the quality and reduce the number of errors in the manufactured beverage containers. Then the company got an order from an important customer to develop a beer-bottle made of polyethylene naphthalene (PEN). These bottles have a more glass-like quality compared to their PET bottles and can withstand higher temperatures during washing.

Improved customer relations
During the manufacturing of the PEN bottles, a problem arose with air-bubbles appearing in a small number of them. The customer was concerned that the bubbles would cause cracks thus risking contamination. Rexam decided to implement vision systems from Cognex in order to develop a process of sorting out defective bottles thus eliminating the problem reducing the failure rate to almost nil. “A strained customer relationship was transformed into a positive customer relationship once the problem was solved”, recalls Urban Larsson, production manager at Rexam Petainer in Lidköping. “That was the gateway into an array of various quality-control projects at Rexam in other areas of our production and that is why the use of vision systems is one of our corner-stones.”

Reliable refilling
Rexam has continued to invest in vision systems in order to ensure the quality demands of refillable bottles as well. During the manufacturer’s own filling operations the bottles are washed carefully. A vision system quality-control check during manufacturing detects any bottles which contain objects or contaminants that cannot be washed out. Cosmetic defects such as air-bubbles can occur during the manufacture of individual bottles. These are detected as the bottles are inflated. Vision systems also check the seal with the bottle-cap to eliminate the risk of leakage. The appearance of the bottles has also become more and more important over the last few years. Bottles with scratches, chips and imperfections such as air-bubbles and other cosmetic defects which in themselves do not affect the function of the bottle are systematically processed through the use of vision.

Environmental friendly
Use of vision systems is a part of Rexam’s efforts to become a resource-efficient company. For improved quality and customer-satisfaction in the face of stiff competition. With the use of vision systems, the quality of bottle manufacturing is assured. The amount of unnecessary waste is eliminated through vision inspection.

In-Sight with Patmax: the packaging industry’s chosen vision solution
“During the past five or six years, our investment in vision systems has really paid off”, says Urban Larsson. “We have gone from doing manual random-sample testing and inspections of a production of several hundred million bottles per year, to a systematic inspection of everything that is manufactured. Through automated inspections, we have a wide cover which together with other quality-control measures minimizes the incidence of error”.

The manufacture of plastic bottles, which saw the launch of quality-control, is on-going, while new products are continuously being developed.

“Our choice of vision provider is based upon Cognex knowledge and experience with vision technology and the needs of the packaging industry,” says Urban Larsson. “Cognex has developed and provided industrial vision technology for 25 years of cost-efficiency with a minimal or non-existent rate of failure in production. Rexam uses the In-Sight type of vision systems which are tailored for automated inspection and verification of quickly moving objects. PatMax ® software is used for property and object localization, and works well when inspecting consumer-product packages.”

“The visual and functional requirements are becoming more and more important in the packaging industry.” says Urban Larsson. “Our customers attach more and more importance to the package’s design. By means of a structured working method, preventative maintenance procedures and various improvement projects, we can quickly adjust our production to meet the various needs of our customers. Using a colorful collection of constant improvements, we have built up a reputation for good quality”, concludes Urban Larsson.

Unilever gets a boost from Robotics

Quick-change versatility and a boost in throughput are two of the benefits gained since a four-robot packaging cell was installed at this Unilever meat plant in Germany.

Seasonal promotions and other marketing initiatives designed to last briefly and change frequently are becoming increasingly important in the fast-moving world of consumer packaged goods. Consumers, too, want ever more variety in the size, shape, and flavor of the products they buy. That means today’s packaging lines must be more versatile than ever, and more often than not they’re gaining that versatility through robotics.

A perfect example can be found at the Unilever plant in Ansbach, Germany, where the popular sausage snack known as Bifi is produced. The recent installation of four delta-style flex-picker robots from ABB (www.abb.com) lets Unilever go from handling one size sausage to another in about three minutes. It also lets Unilever redeploy as many as six operators who used to be required for hand packing of the sausages into thermoformed rollstock. And while the previously manual operation could only feed the downstream thermoform/seal system at 8 cycles/min, that machine now runs routinely at 15 cycles/min because the upstream robotic packaging cell is comfortable at that pace.

In operation since March, 2006, this is the second robotic packaging cell installed at the Ansbach plant. The first uses five delta-style robots to handle about 360 sausages/min. By comparison, the newest cell uses four robots instead of five and handles nearly 600 sausages/min. Permitting this surge in throughput and efficiency are improvements in both hardware and software. On the hardware side, the end effector on each robot is a triple-gripper. Each time it carries sausages to a thermoformed package, it does so three at a time.

Also notable is that only minor mechanical adjustments are required when Unilever changes to any of six sausage diameters. New parameters are chosen at a touchscreen and the pneumatically actuated mechanical grippers pretty much ready themselves for a new sausage diameter.

Nimble and sure-handed, the end-effectors were designed and built by Schunk (www.schunk.com) in collaboration with robomotion (www.robomotion.de), a specialist in robotics. Robomotion also had integration responsibilities on the robotic installation. One of robomotion’s key accomplishments was keeping the footprint of the robotic cell to a mere 2.5 x 3.5 m (8.20’ x 11.48’). Software played a key role in making this possible because it minimizes the distance that the robotic end effectors must travel. More on this later.

From cutting to packaging

Individual units of the sausage product are cut from long strings in a room adjacent to the packaging room. Their ultimate goal is to make their way into the thermoformed cavities produced in a multilayer forming web by an R530 system from Multivac (www.multivac.com).
This system forms, evacuates, and backflushes the packs before heat sealing lidding material into place.

A series of conveyors brings the sausages to a vibratory hopper that meters them onto two flat conveyors leading to the robotic cell. Running beneath and perpendicular to these conveyors is the multilayer forming web that has just emerged from the forming station of the Multivac R530 system. The four robots continually pick incoming sausages from the conveyor belts and place them into the rows of thermoformed cavities.

A Siemens (www.siemens.com) PC—plus ABB’s Pickmaster software—is the “brains” behind the robotic system. The PC learns the precise location of sausages on their infeed conveyor from a Cognex (www.cognex.com) vision system mounted at the infeed of the robotic cell. The PC sends to an ABB robotic controller the precise coordinates pinpointing sausage location. The ABB controller then determines the best strategy for one of the four robots to pick which sausages and when; the controller also determines into which thermoformed cavity sausages should be placed.

The number of sausages conveyed into the robotic cell exceeds the capacity of the four robotic heads. That way, the robots are never “starved” of incoming product. Besides, it’s inevitable that some sausages will land on the conveyor so close to each other that the robotic end effectors would have difficulty picking just one or the other. The Cognex vision system sees this condition and relays it to the Siemens PC, which in turn communicates with the ABB controller so that ultimately the robots will be steered to other, more readily picked, sausages. Sausages that don’t get picked tumble from the conveyor and are automatically recirculated back through the robotic cell again.

The exchange of information from vision system to PC to robotic controller takes place via an industrial Ethernet connection. ABB’s PickMaster software is a key tool used to tightly integrate the motion of the robots, the infeed conveyors, and the vision system. The powerful combination of robotics and vision brings great flexibility and an ability to make format changes quickly. According to Henrik Knobel, product manager at ABB, Cognex vision was chosen on the strength of its technology and because it offered efficient PC-software interfaces for integrating the vision functions in ABB’s robot technology. “Industrial vision technology gives a broad range of ABB robots the eyes to see where parts are located and to pick them accurately,” says Knobel.

The image processing system brings an added quality-control benefit. “Each individual product is measured and compared to a predetermined set of parameters,” says Torsten Ruetze, project engineer at Unilever. This provides a statistical record of how many pieces are too thick or long or thin or optically defective.

Software’s role

Additional software written by robomotion and running on the ABB controller also plays a key role. It executes what robovision’s Andreas Wolf calls “path planning.” He explains it this way.

“The Siemens PC is the brain that decides where the robots should go to pick the sausages,” says Wolf. “But the ABB controller, upon receiving that information from the PC, then decides the best paths for all four robots to take. It’s a bit trickier than usual in this particular case because, in order to keep the overall system footprint to a minimum, we designed it so that the robots’ paths sometimes overlap. Without the proper software programming, the robots would crash into each other.”

That they don’t crash into each other is one of the more remarkable things about watching the system work. Be sure to see the video footage.

Date-coding is handled by a bank of eight Videojet (www.videojet.com) ink-jet coders. Once past these coders, a cutting station separates individual packs from the web of material. Secondary packaging, for the time being, is done manually.

Once the thermoformed cavities are filled with sausages, they proceed to the station of the Multivac system that evacuates ambient air and backflushes each cavity with nitrogen before heat sealing the lidding material in place. Just ahead of this station is a second Cognex vision system that checks to see if any package is without product. If it finds one, a signal is sent to the downstream cutting station to prevent the cutting tools from cutting that group of packages from the web. An operator then places the uncut group aside. In this way, the empty cavity is prevented from making its way out of the plant.

Ruetze says the key contribution made by the robots is that they now allow the line to operate at optimal speed. He’s also pleased that it took only 10 days to get the system installed and put into commercial operation.

“This was an important project for us,” he adds.

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21st Century Vision

Cognex founder Dr. Bob Shillman with an early Cognex test system.

Today’s Cognex DataMan 100 fixed mount ID reader packs
much more functionality into a much smaller package.

Today’s vision systems have come a long way since the first DataMan system was developed in the early 1980s.  The functionality and user-focused design now available to Cognex customers is the result of more than 25 years of hands-on experience developing new vision technology and solving the industry’s most challenging vision applications.

Today, Cognex retains its focus as a company of “vision experts.”  The company continues to investigate new ways to improve performance of industrial machine vision, while also exploring new markets where vision can provide a competitive advantage, such as transportation (lane departure warning systems) and building security (monitoring secure portals and doorways).

Each of Cognex’s three founders continues to play an important role within the company: Bob Shillman is Cognex’s Chairman and CEO; Marilyn Matz is Senior Vice President of the Vision Software Business Group, and Bill Silver is Senior Vice President and Senior Fellow, pursuing research into new product areas.

All three founders – along with a team of some 800 Cognoids – continue to work hard to maintain the company’s worldwide position as industry leader in machine vision.

Cognex Becomes a Market Leader in Vision Systems!

In 2004, Cognex was invited to open trading at Nasdaq in
celebration of its 15th year as a publicly-traded company.

Cognex’s OEM-focused strategy paid off. In early 1987, the company became profitable for the first time in its history. Cognex went public on the NASDAQ exchange in 1989, at $1.38 per share. Within one year, the stock price had tripled.

Cognex set about growing its business in this period by expanding internationally.

In 1989, Cognex opened its first international office in Munich, Germany.  In 1990, Cognex established a Tokyo-based subsidiary, Cognex KK, to serve the company’s rapidly growing business with large semiconductor and electronics capital equipment makers in Japan.  Today, Cognex has more than 20 offices throughout North America, Europe, and Asia to serve its worldwide customer base, and hundreds of distributors around the world that carry Cognex Vision Systems.

In 1995 the company also made the first of many acquisitions when it purchased Acumen, a U.S. based developer of wafer identification equipment for the semiconductor industry. Acquisitions have played an important role in the company’s growth, and enabled Cognex to enter new markets for Vision Systems such as surface inspection, and vehicle vision.

Early Obstacles

Cognex received one of its first patents for Search, a powerful
software tool that dramatically improved machine vision
performance by enabling quick, accurate location of patterns
in gray-scale images. Cognex now has a portfolio of more than
250 patents for advances in machine vision technology.

Despite a growing list of customers using Cognex vision, serious challenges soon became apparent in the company’s business model.  Implementing a vision application in these early years required computer programming knowledge, and users demanded considerable support.

In addition, factory conditions were unpredictable.  Early systems often did not perform reliably outside of development laboratories, where factors like lighting, reflections and shadows could be controlled.   Misperceptions about what vision could realistically achieve combined with poor reliability in factory settings resulted in many vision companies spending too much time supporting customer applications.  As a result, Cognex…and every other company that had entered the vision business… was losing money.

In 1986, Cognex made a major technical breakthrough that helped solve the problem of system reliability.   Cognex co-founder Bill Silver developed a powerful software tool called Search that could locate patterns in gray scale images very quickly and accurately, and succeeded in dramatically improving the results that users could achieve with their vision systems.

At the same time, Cognex launched a new business strategy that helped ensure the company’s survival and subsequent market leadership.

That strategy was to develop and sell standard machine vision hardware and software products to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), who could integrate machine vision into the manufacturing equipment they sold into factories.  These OEMs had engineers on staff with the expertise to program the vision applications, and who then supplied end-users with equipment that had the vision already built in.

This combination of superior technology and new business direction provided the winning recipe that would help Cognex succeed and grow, while the majority of other early vision companies soon failed or got out of the business.

New In-Sight Micro boosts automotive suppliers’ production

New In-Sight Micro boosts automotive suppliers’ production

…. “Using the new Cognex In-Sight Micro vision system with its compact size and high performance, has ensured our customer can build their parts safe in the knowledge that there will be no product defects due to appliqué clipping.”  Visteon, based in Portugal, is using the new In-Sight Micro from Cognex as recommended and installed by Cognex specialist partner integrator Alphr Technology, based in the UK, to optimize the production of automotive control panels.

Wanted – pinpoint precision Visteon is a leading supplier to the top automotive manufacturers in the world. With their business covering a number of key areas including Climate Control, Electronics, Interiors and Lighting, there is no room for error in product delivery. Amongst an impressive product range within their electronics business, Visteon supplies instrument panels for many executive car models across Europe. One vital element of the panel involves the appliqué, a plastic sheet incorporating the speedo and tacho markings. Each appliqué must be clipped into position with pinpoint precision; otherwise the vibration from driving the car could make the appliqué move, resulting in the incorrect speed and revs being shown.

High volume production requires a powerful vision solution
To ensure accurate assembly verification, it was time to bring in a powerful vision system which could not only could cope with Visteon’s high-volume panel production but also fit within the confines of the allocated space.

The partner of choice
Ensuring the most capable and cost-effective vision system would be used; Visteon called upon its trusted vision technology supplier Alphr Technology Ltd. Based in the UK, Alphr Technology has been working with Visteon for a number of years and had previously installed similar lines at their plant in Portugal, as well as other factories across Hungary, Mexico and India. Offering a complete solution, Alphr would design, build, programme and retro-fit the system on-site at their facility in Portugal.

Precision inspection with the In-Sight Micro
Having assessed the project requirements, Alphr selected Cognex’s brand new high-performance In-Sight® Micro to achieve the required inspection rates. Launched earlier this year and measuring just 30mm x 30mm x 60mm, the In-Sight Micro is a unique and powerful vision system, specifically designed to offer outstanding performance as well as fit within confined areas, a common issue in many production facilities.

This new system would also complement two existing Cognex In-Sight 1000 cameras, successfully inspecting pointer alignment for the speedo, tacho, fuel and temperature gauges on each instrument panel.

The production line
To cope with customer demand, two identical production lines were required, running simultaneously in three x 8 hour shifts, 5 days a week, producing 2000 parts per day. Two In-Sight Micro cameras are fitted per production line and are mounted onto a FlexLink frame with LED spot lights mounted alongside the cameras.

Both production lines assemble the PCB with the necessary plastics and LCDs and fully test the parts. Using PatMax®, Cognex’s industry-leading geometric pattern matching technology, the cameras search for two plastic pips positioned at 3 o’clock and 9 o’clock on each appliqué’s white circle. If these pips are obscured, the appliqué is sitting on top of the clip rather than behind it and is therefore not affixed correctly. The power of the PatMax software ensures each feature is located despite any process variation.

Each part is manually loaded onto the rig by an operator and then removed once the inspection is complete. Results are viewed on a PC monitor using a test program written in Visual Basic 6. Failure tickets are printed for the operators and all results are sent to a factory CIM system to monitor performance. Any defective parts are manually removed from the rig, once the operator has pressed the ‘reject acknowledgement’ key.

Success breeds success!
Speed of production has been unaffected despite the new inspection requirement; as the In-Sight Micros inspect each appliqué in a fraction of a second, ensuring production and optimum throughput remains constant. Declan McCabe, Applications Engineer at Alphr Technology was responsible for the electrical design, software development and installation. “Visteon was so impressed with the success of this project; they have requested a quotation for an identical system on another production line.”

Cognex’s Company History

A New Company, and a New Industry

Cognex founders Robert J. Shillman (seated), Marilyn Matz
and Bill Silver in a photo taken for a 2004 Fortune
magazine article entitled, “Heroes of Manufacturing.”

Cognex Corporation was founded in 1981 by Dr. Robert J. Shillman, a lecturer in human visual perception at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Shillman decided to leave academia to start Cognex, investing his life savings of $100,000 into the company. He invited two MIT graduate students – Marilyn Matz and Bill Silver – to embark on this business venture with him, offering free bicycles to convince them to leave MIT for a summer. What began as a summer job for Marilyn and Bill turned out to be the start of a career, as they stayed on to help co-found the company. These three individuals gave Cognex its start – and its name, which was derived from the phrase “Cognition Experts”.