Vision Inspector™ Beacon

Boulder Imaging offers Vision Inspector™ Beacon, the intelligent machine vision system that detects defects, non-uniformities, and characteristics in precision parts (metal, plastic, glass, rubber), web materials (such as paper), and coatings (such as paint, ink, film).

Inspection of Surface Defects

Vision Inspector™ Beacon as an in-line or off-line inspection solution provides:

• Micron-level inspection of surface quality (including cylindrical surfaces) and non-uniformities.
• Defect detection.
• Analysis of spectral variation (light, reflection, or color).
• Web/print inspection (registration, regularity, uniformity).

Key Benefits

• Production line inspection for defects and anomalies.
• Customizable inspection logic to meet 100% of your specific needs.
• Find and review identified defects and anomalies quickly and easily.
• Find specific events for detailed examination quickly and easily.
• Access video archives of defects and anomalies to effortlessly analyze historic performance records.
• Monitor multiple Beacon systems from a single station.
• Remotely manage and monitor any Beacon system.

What the system does

Vision Inspector™ Beacon scans a part,  coating, or web material and instantly analyzes the surface for defects, non-uniformities, and other characteristics. Defects can include chips, bubbles, inclusions, scratches, dents, non-registration, or any other non-uniformity. Beacon can also inspect thickness of coatings on just about any type of material.

Beacon categorizes products into pass or fail, sends the results to either a robotic or other automated handling system, and sorts products as appropriate. If a part fails, a high resolution image and a detailed data profile of the defects are made available for analysis. From there, reports are generated describing overall and specific performance characteristics of the part and the production process. Beacon provides an easy to use interface for viewing defects as well as specific stored inspection events and related video or images of defects. This allows a production manager or process engineer to identify and correct specific problems in real-time.

You can now affordably and instantly inspect 100% of your parts, regardless of the speed of your manufacturing process.

 
How Lexmark uses the system today

At Lexmark, the Beacon system is used to inspect printer drums on multiple production lines at rates of 80 parts/min.  Beacon then guides robots to sort the drums into pass or fail groups. An operator workstation for each line allows an engineer to view defects as well as to perform rule-based classification into likely causes of the defects on the production line in real time, improving overall assembly line quality and control.

Defects can be extremely small (bubbles, scratches, etc. down to 50 microns) and require powerful image processing to detect and classify. Costs incurred as a result of defects in the printer drum manufacturing process were reduced 40% by the Beacon system implementation.

Boulder Imaging also addressed environmental and materials challenges in the solution design and implementation. Factors such as surface reflection, lighting, camera selection, etc., were all carefully integrated to create the successful implementation for Lexmark.

Beacon is built to easily grow with Lexmark. As Lexmark creates new models, a simple tuning of algorithms is all that is required. In effect, this solution addresses both current requirements and future needs while reducing historical problems with false positives.

 
Lexmark International’s Senior Production Engineer stated:

"Boulder Imaging has been our exclusive imaging system partner for over four years. In that time we have integrated four of their inspection systems into our production lines. These production lines run 24/7 and we depend on the inspection systems from Boulder Imaging to be 100% reliable. We can't run without them. The reliability has been excellent. These inspection systems are tightly coupled to our robotic parts handling systems. So we not only had the challenges of capturing and processing quality images, but also doing it within the time and space limitations of the work cell." 

Take Maximum Advantage of the Beacon

Beacon provides extensive value beyond production quality inspection of defective parts. It also provides vital insight into material quality and consistency, as well as machine lifecycle performance. Beacon from Boulder Imaging is a critical tool for quality control, supply quality management, equipment resource management, line productivity, and system process improvement.